


What You Wanted

by KittySmith



Series: Unnamed Horrors Run in the Family [2]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series), Faerie Folklore, Folklore - Fandom
Genre: Ableist Language, Because I can, Blood and Violence, Children's Stories, Dark Forces as advertised, Explicit Language, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Elements, Folklore, Gen, I call this new pairing the MomSquad, I know I said no pairings but there are background pairings, Tilted morality, all platonic all the time, ch ch ch changes, creepypasta? lol maybe, dadvid, mentioned potential Bonquisha/Gwen, mentions of past child neglect / abuse, more to come - Freeform, no pairings with David or Max though, serial killer dadvid, tense familial relationships, the wind down of the apocalypse, vigilante killer dadvid, weird family fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 15:32:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 50,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19726522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittySmith/pseuds/KittySmith
Summary: Everything is different.There's three things you need to know about Max: he always (never) gets what he wants, no matter what anyone tells you; all of his plans work out for the best (for someone else); and he's fine with the end of the world - no, really. As a shining example of honesty, Max just knows you'll believe him.Nothing has changed.





	1. Prologue

There was a funny little noise that the crank radio made while Max was charging it. Not the sort of noise that usually came from gears and springs, but a quiet hum that only seemed audible when he was the one turning the crank.

 _Still_ , he reasoned to himself, _it’s probably just that I can only hear it when it’s right next to me_.

His hand worked at a steady pace and the radio continued to emit a gentle, happy hum, shining briefly in the flickering light of the low fire. In fact, between the dimming light of the autumn sun and the searching rustle of small woodland creatures, Max figured it would have almost been peaceful.

“Fuck, David!”

He smirked as Gwen hit the loamy dirt for a fifth time that evening, but didn’t bother throwing another insult her way. From the way she was only half-glaring at David’s relaxed stance above her, she was fully aware of how she’d messed up this time.

The former counselor extended a hand her way, advising, “You need to keep-”

“I _know_ ,” Gwen interrupted with a groan, gripping the hand hard and pulling herself up again. “My feet spread. For balance. I _know_.”

Waiting patiently as Gwen futilely patted herself down, shaking off only the newest layer of dirt over her patchwork hiking gear, David shifted his attention away with a half smile.

“How’s it looking, Max?” He nodded towards the camp grill over the low fire. “Should we turn them before the next round?”

A grumble from Gwen made them all aware she was ready for it to be the _last_ round, tonight.

As it turned out, the two birds that had dive-bombed Max earlier today were starting to look a bit crispy around the edges. “Probably,” Max decided, setting the radio aside with only a little reluctance.

He hadn’t really _enjoyed_ the whole set of lessons David was force-feeding him on field dressing the strange animals that mysteriously took offence to Max’s existence, but the outcome was worth it: fresh meat.

His mouth watered at the thought, even if they’d just _had_ some kind of greyish jackalope type thing two days ago. By this point, a lot of the towns had been… converted, and it meant the stores were either running on fumes with a backup generator, or blacked out entirely. Anything that had once been fresh was long since rotting, now.

Of course, the first time they’d gained the confidence to re-enter society and found it a little more abandoned than they were used to, David had beelined right past all the non-perishables into the camping and gardening supplies. Max was sure he was hiding a variety of seed packets somewhere in his pack, but had yet to find them. David was optimistic like that.

Had been optimistic like that.

Sometimes he was, again. It was just… different.

Everything was different.

Whatever. The point was, the granola and canned crap were getting old, and Max didn’t care if the murder birds from this morning had been ethereally beautiful. All those delicate ice-blue feathers were shoved in his bag, anyway, and right now the dinner formally known as “bird” was smelling pretty good.

“I think we can let them rest.” David’s voice came from right over his shoulder and Max barely avoided dropping his hand nearly into the fire. Of course, David’s hand was already between his and the flame when he recovered, but the risk was still there. A wince met Max’s incredulous look and David shrugged uncomfortably, “Sorry.”

That was the other thing.

About everything being different and all.

David’s supernatural strength had started to fade by the first week. By the end of the first month, he’d been back to just ridiculous levels. But he was so _quiet_ when he moved. Like he couldn't turn it off anymore. 

Plus, he hadn’t been eating enough. With the way non-sentient (and god, Max really hoped they were all non-sentient) creatures seemed to hone in on them with unrelenting intensity, they weren’t exactly starving. Add in David’s knowledge of the gross and bitter edible plants in the area and they should all have been fine until winter. Yet David’s cheeks were thinner, the lines of his face sharper.

“Are you actually going to eat tonight?” Gwen asked, clearly on the same line of thought Max was as she settled into a cross-legged seat on the other side of the small fire.

“I eat,” David protested, the smile that had been trying to make a comeback dying on his lips and his brow furrowing nearly into a frown. “You both see me eat. Everyday.”

"Not enough," Gwen pointed out, getting out the cutlery from her pack in the clear hope that if she just got settled _enough_ , David wouldn't make her get back up later. "You eat less than me."

"I eat until I'm not hungry anymore, Gwen. It's _fine_ ," he asserted with a little more force when he saw her mouth open again. "I'm _fine_."

With that said, it seemed Gwen and Max were ready to maintain a mutinous silence, but silence nonetheless. David sighed and reached over Max to turn on the radio.

Azira's familiar voice filled the clearing, authoritatively informing their audience of the hazards to be found in garden ponds and streams now that kelpies had begun rising out of the muck again.

It leant a normality to the scene that would have felt out of place a few months ago. Gwen and Max stopped shooting David glances to fall into the well-worn habits of preparing dinner. David was weird, and some things were… different. But he was fine.

Now if only David could convince himself of that.


	2. Hello Anita

David's face _was_ sharper. He turned his head slightly to see the dim reflection in the blade of his newest scavenged hunting knife. Now that Max was snoring slightly against his side and Gwen had curled into the cocoon that signified she was deeply asleep, David was free to quietly panic. It was his nightly ritual.

This probably wasn't the healthiest way to end the day, but when the world had basically ended by his hand, David felt he could cut himself a little slack.

His cheeks were thinner, but he hadn't lost any weight. Gwen was more compact and Max was starting to show the worn edges of constant stress, but David really was fine. Physically, anyway.

Probably.

They couldn't go on like this, though. Running. Not when winter was around the corner, and the weather might be the least of their worries. Creatures of snow and ice were rarely anything less than cruel in the stories.

They needed to find a settlement, preferably human, that would accept two workers and a child.

At this point any warrants out for their arrest would likely be lost under the torrents of emergencies that had followed with the promotion of fairy tales and ghost stories into actual fact.

An upside of the apocalypse.

"Hello?"

David's knife came up on automatic, legs tensing beneath him even as his other hand gripped Max's shoulder to wake him.

His heart was leaping wildly as a young woman with piercing hazel eyes and familiar messy hair walked hesitantly into the light of their fire, lowering a handheld GPS in one hand but pointing the gun steadily with her other.

Her eyes flicked down to Max and widened minutely, her fingers tightening on the gun. Lips parted in a whisper of incredulous relief. "Max." She jerked the gun forward slightly, keeping it pointed at David's head to avoid getting it anywhere near Max. "Get away from him. I'm taking him home."

"Who are you?" David asked instead, raising his hands slowly between them, knife flipped easily to the dirt when its glint made her jaw tighten.

Like hell she was taking Max. But it'd be better to at least appear to cooperate.

Fully awake now, Max put a hand against David's side and pushed past him. "Aunt Anita?" His voice was high and tight before he cleared his throat. Max sounded his normal self when he demanded caustically, "Are you really pointing a fucking gun at your only nephew?"

Her aim dropped slightly. The accusation had slipped past her guard. She quickly corrected, keeping David at bay, "No! No, I- Your parents told me you'd been kidnapped, and I asked- well, someone knew where you were. I'm here to rescue you."

Stance firming, she glared down the gun at David. The way she held it implied familiarity with the weapon. And lining herself up behind it only seemed to make her more confident.

"You're going to let him go."

"Oh, thank god!" Gwen's sob was only a little melodramatic, but Anita's gun hastily pointed down and away when Gwen reached out for her. "You're here to save us? Look what he's done to me!" She held out purple wrists. While it made sense she’d bruise from learning to break out of a hold, David still had to fight back a wince. He _did_ technically cause those. Gwen continued to cry her way closer to Anita. 

"I- of course, I'll help you, too. Come here," Anita waved behind her, hoping to get the distraught woman out of her line of fire.

Weeping, Gwen stumbled into her, loose-limbed until the second Anita instinctively closed arms around her. Instantly, Gwen dropped down, out of her hold, and took her legs out from under her.

David was there before Anita even hit the ground, pinning her wrist to the soil and relieving her of her gun with an irritated twist. He took apart the gun with practiced ease and tossed the pieces away.

At Max's raised eyebrows, David explained curtly, "My mother was military. Also never do what Gwen just did; the gun could have gone off." Only a little pale, Gwen threw him the middle finger, backing away and putting David between her and the stranger.

Nodding, Max edged forward and leaned over his aunt, "Break anything?" There was only the slightest tremble of concern, but enough to make David glad he hadn't crushed the woman's wrist like he'd wanted.

"I'm alright," Anita answered, a bit dazedly. She shook her head and sat up. A flash of something steel passed through her. She grabbed Max to her chest like she could shield him from the two other adults looking over them.

Gwen rolled her eyes, wiping the crocodile tears away, though her fingers shook. "Even if we let you take him, he'd run right back to David the second you looked away."

Anita's laugh was derisive, "I'm just supposed to take your word for it, am I?"

"You don't really get a choice," David said with a smile that had all the marks of kindness but… off. Crooked. Like the compassion of a mercy killing. Anita didn’t like people who could smile like that. It was too much like memories of a man’s voice forming the words: _for your own good_.

"Yeah, I'm not- god, let _go_ ," Max complained, squirming harder and finally pushing her away. Anita reached for him again but this time he ducked the attempt. He slipped back to David's side and safety. Standing a little taller once he made it, Max crossed his arms over his chest. "I left those fucknuts on my own, and I'm not going back. ...How’d you even find us?"

“Magic," Anita responded in the same flat disbelief Max often said it. Thanks to this similarity, David was fairly certain she was telling the truth. "Max, this is kidnapping. Whether you went with it or not. You two," she glared up fiercely at both adults now, no longer giving Gwen the benefit of the doubt, "are criminals, taking a boy from his family- especially now, when we should all be trying to keep humanity intact."

"You're pretty fearless," Gwen commented idly. "Confronting two hardened criminals without your weapon about what terrible people they are." She examined her nails on a slowly steadying hand. "And kind of shameless, trying to drag a kid back into abuse."

"They never hit me," Max protested sullenly, the argument worn with repetition.

At the same time, Anita exclaimed, "My brother would _never_ -"

"I'm guessing you weren't really there," David cut in. "And it doesn't matter what you think. You can't win. Start packing." The last was thrown over his shoulder at Gwen and Max.

"Not my boss," Gwen reminded him with a lazy, sardonic salute, color nearly restored, but she did gather up what they'd be bringing with them, Max at her side. They efficiently took apart their camp site as David retrieved his knife and sheathed it, waiting and watching for Anita to make a move.

He wasn't surprised she was watching him just as closely. She was Max's aunt, after all, and if his parents had certainly had the same sort of animal cunning Max had, with a healthy dose of detachment... Well, Max didn't talk about his family much at all, but he'd mentioned her once with a kind of off-handed longing. Like something he'd given up wanting long ago. Despite the fact that Max relied on _David_ through an unlikely series of events, David couldn’t see the kid valuing anyone that couldn’t keep up with him.

Usually, anyway.

She had her knees pulled up to her chest, clearly wary to make a move with eyes on her. David didn't want to leave her unconscious behind them, since that could easily become a death sentence and he was trying to do… less of that. Especially in regards to people that would leave Max traumatized.

He crouched down to her level, just out of arm's reach. "Max is safe with me. You… you aren't." His tone was vaguely apologetic, eyes earnest. "I would really prefer it if you _didn't_ attack us again. We're a little busy, with winter coming, and so I'm a little _stressed_. I can't guarantee your safety if you point a gun anywhere near Max again, alrighty?"

Any other person, and Anita would just be annoyed. She hadn't aimed at Max, and she was in the right! But there was something wrong with… everything about this man. An uncomfortably familiar contempt in the way he looked at her. Like she was nothing. She swallowed, trying to push past the growing unease, and addressed the weakness she was sure he hadn't meant to reveal. "You don't have anywhere to stay for the winter, do you?"

A flicker of irritation through the abruptly flat eyes of her nemesis gave her all the answer she needed.

Leaping at the opening, she dug her nails into the gap and scrambled for a way in with a hasty, "I know a human settlement, pretty near here, and I can show you the way-"

"So both you and Max's parents will know where he is." David finished the sentence for her. It was a valid conclusion, but not the only one. Anita liked to think she had her priorities in order.

She set her lips into a thin line, shooting back, "So Max won't freeze to death."

They held a stare of mutual distrust before David set back on his heels with a rueful smile that melted away the mental chant of _wrong wrong wrong_ that had been making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It was strange how he seemed so much more human now, when his expression had barely shifted. Had he just relaxed? Was it that he knew Max’s wellbeing was something to hold over her head, now?

"You're right," he told her with a sudden cheer, standing and extending a hand her direction. "You can be our guide."

She warily got to her feet, keeping a distance from the offered hand. "That's it? You'll just go with me? Why?”

His smile tipped to one side, and _wrong wrong wrong_ poured through her mind again like a temporary dam had burst.

"Either this works out, or I'll _make_ it work." Teeth shone as his lips parted around an honest grin, "Win-win."

.

"You have never been camping," Gwen declared later that day. Anita had nearly slapped Max's water bottle out of his hand when David tried to pass it back to him. This was likely due to the fact that…

“He put something in the water earlier!” She pointed at David as if it wasn’t clear exactly who she was talking about.

“Purification tablets,” David explained, digging around in his bag with purpose before coming up with the Macropur tablets in their original packaging. “See?” If his smile was a little tense, no one was going to call him on it.

“I don’t think anyone in my family has been camping,” Max added, entirely ignoring the interaction in favor of focusing on Gwen. David and Anita were background noise until David agreed to _make Anita leave_. They’d been doing just fine on their own. Why even _find_ a settlement? There were plenty of empty houses, now. Fixing one up for the winter couldn’t be that hard. Humans had been surviving without electricity for thousands of years.

Anita shot back something about how the package had been opened and who _knew_ what…

“Mine, either. I took the job at Camp Campbell so they’d never visit,” Gwen mused. “Of course, if I’d realized I could just go on the lam with my murder-happy coworker and a small tangle of evil in child form, I might have just skipped the wage slave portion of my existence altogether.”

“You really have a darkness in you, Gwen,” Max nodded in response to the unprovoked sarcasm. His hands were in his pockets and he kept Gwen between him and the two verbal combatants. They strode together through the trees in the direction Anita had plotted when they set out. “I knew there was _something_ redeemable in there.”

With a lovely smile, Gwen splashed just a small amount of water on the back of Max’s neck, “Right back at you.”

“Gwen!” Max ground out in shock. At her shit-eating grin, he threw a handful of crinkly autumn leaves ineffectually towards her. She opened her mouth to mock the attempt and stopped dead.

Her hand fell on Max’s shoulder to halt him and he let his glare falter as she murmured, “Wait a second.” They’d been making better time than David and Anita, given that David was half-heartedly trying to defend himself from Anita’s onslaught, and they seemed to have lost sight of them.

And hearing.

In fact…

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s a fairy circle,” Gwen realized, seeing the strangely regular line of pale blue mushrooms they’d stepped over, unnoticed. The world outside the ring had blurred out of recognition. A loud curse from Max as he took in this information was entirely expected.

“Why did so many white people have to live around Camp Campbell?” he complained, moving closer to Gwen. “If it weren’t for fucking colonization, we would never have to deal with European fairies and their fucking ridiculous rings.”

A sybillant voice rose from the sorrel and clovers at their feet, “How rude.” Following its voice, a snake reared up before them to a threatening height of… Max’s waist. The fairy in the form of a small snake swayed slightly, flashing brilliant colors that shifted as it moved, “Especially as you two have trespassed upon a fairy ring. One might call you home invaders, and here you are, decrying the existence the home of you invade.”

“Okay, be very careful what you say to it, Mmmmy child,” Gwen corrected herself when she nearly gave the being Max’s name. Little European shits like this one were all about names.

“Yeah, yeah, I got this. N- my fri-” Max stopped waving Gwen’s words off dismissively in order to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of glaring at himself. “ _Some of the campers_ pounded that Game of Thrones speaking into my head.”

Oh no, Max had a plan. Gwen took an instinctive step back before she could consciously correct the action and move forward to stop him, instead. “Wait-”

Too late. Max had already stepped forward, arms wide as if reprising his role as a dark wizard in Romeo and Juliet II. “Oh great fairy of the ring, grant us safe passage. I offer you the trophy we last earned in a life-or-death battle, in return.” The words were respectful but the tone was not. More… flat than earnest. An annoyed recitation of flowery words. It made for a slightly confusing picture. 

The serpent opened its mouth, shut it, then visibly ignored the inconsistency and tilted its head, “I accept. What do you offer, tall one?” It looked up at Gwen expectantly, and if she was reading the twitching tail correctly, it was also a little excited.

“I offer…” Gwen’s thoughts hastily dove through everything in her pack and what old fairy tales always seemed to value. Max and the snake could watch the panic move about quite clearly on her face until she figured it out. “I offer a part of my own body, of my choosing and which I shall remove, in exchange for safe passage.”

The snake somehow managed an expression that conveyed a shrug of, _good deal_.

“I accept,” it replied aloud, rising further up and flashing golden eyes at the human pair. “Present your offerings!”

“My trophy,” Max rummaged through his bag and produced the ice-blue feathers from the birds that had thought to kill him for the high crime of existing in their general vicinity.

Simultaneously, Gwen plucked a hair from her head with a wince and held it out towards the snake, “A part of my own body.”

For a moment there was dead silence.

“Put them on me, maybe,” the snake suggested, after looking around the clearing with obvious impatience. A look was exchanged between the two humans, but Gwen and Max hesitantly leaned closer and dropped the offerings on the snake. They sprang back to their previous positions when the deed was done, but nothing happened. It was slightly awkward, given that the silence was unbroken even by muffled noises of the outside world. A powerful ring, indeed.

“Oh, for naga’s sake,” the snake muttered, eyeing the hair and feathers before turning back to Gwen and Max plaintively. “You couldn’t have offered me food, could you? No, of course not.” With a sigh, it unhinged its jaw and ate the two offerings. Then it coiled up on itself and looked around the clearing again.

Bewildered, Gwen mirrored the action, but Max’s eyes were beginning to narrow in the snake’s direction.

It danced agitatedly and uncoiled, snapping once at the air, “Bugger all, I was sure that would work!”

A single finger pointed the snake’s direction. “I knew it! You’ve got no fucking clue what you’re doing, do you?” Max accused, throwing his hands up for the next question and gaining steam. “What kind of shitty fairy can’t even work their own ring?”

Puffing up, the snake rose nearly to Max’s chest, “What kind of fairy? What _kind_ of _fairy_!” Abruptly it deflated, “The kind that’s… not a fairy. I- I’m just a snake…? Or I was? I may have...” It squirmed uncomfortably, twisting in on itself with some anxiety, “I may have eaten a fairy? And now I have all these _thoughts_ and _feelings_ and oh, my lord mamba, the _words_! So many words! And not one of them tells me how to get _out_ of this _stupid circle_! All for the sake of a meal in this overhunted forest!”

Ranting now, the little snake was circling the inside of the ring, utterly oblivious to its fellow captives.

“I didn’t ask to know I was alive! I never needed knowledge of my mortality! Am I even mortal? I ate a fairy! Maybe I’ll never die! Or maybe- maybe they’re poisonous! Maybe I’ll die tomorrow! Oh _help me I know about tomorrow!_ ” 

The words had devolved from anger into a wailing sort of disbelief in record time. 

“Everything’s _magic_ now and you can’t survive as just a little snake but I never wanted to be _this_ , either! What am I? I’m not even supposed to know what an existential crisis is, much less _have one_!” The snake leaned up against the invisible barrier above the mushrooms separating this reality from the one outside and made a drawn out noise that resembled a human sob in the same way a whale moaning resembles song.

“Well, that’s just great,” Max gestured at the sobbing snake. “We’re all stuck in a fairy ring with no way out because the first creature to get stuck _ate_ the fucking fairy.”

“I didn’t even know what a fairy _was_ ,” the snake wailed.

“It seems like you do now,” Max pointed out irritably, and paused. “Wait, you know now.”

“Now I know what a fairy is!” the snake agreed in a distraught sob.

Catching on, Gwen squatted down beside the wrecked reptile with wide eyes, “Oh man, does eating a fairy give you its memories?”

“Does- does it?” Choppy sobs trailing off to hiccups, the reptile slid down the invisible barrier into a loose coil to think. “Maybe it does?” Its eyes narrowed, in defiance of all known snake anatomy, before it reared back abruptly, pupils going wide. “Oooh,” it hissed in awe, “Oh, it _does_.”

“So you can get us all out of here,” Gwen picked the snake up with an inappropriately fearless scoop, given her relative lack of snake-handling experience. She’d only taught one snake-charming class, to the previous year’s campers, and it hadn’t gone well. Or rather, she’d thought it had gone catastrophically until she met Max’s year of campers and revised her opinion to ‘sort of okay.’

Coiling around her arm for better balance, the snake turned to her, “Maybe? I have to remember how. And I only had to remember a few things before this. Like where food likes to gather. Or what to do when we form a mating ball, like-”

“Think about _fairy rings_ ,” Max interjected impatiently, “or I’ll eat _you_.”

The snake stared at him for a moment, then turned to Gwen, “Will he really?”

“Probably,” Gwen shrugged. “I’m pretty sure everything he eats gets converted into pure spite anyway, so he should be fine. And hey,” she snapped her fingers Max’s direction, “if you eat the snake, maybe _you’ll_ get its memories, and the fairy’s memories, and we can get out that way.”

“Yes, that is exactly what my plan was,” Max agreed without hesitation, still glaring at the snake with a progressively darker glower. “Think, snake!”

“I have a name!” The snake shot back. Upon receiving an expectant look from Gwen, it coiled up closer to her arm and admitted in a small voice, “No, I don’t.”

“Wait, do you remember the fairy’s name, at least?” When the snake gave him an oddly hopeful look, Max resisted the urge to shake the reptile off Gwen’s arm and kick it. “Not for _you_. Doesn’t a fairy’s name give you the power to ignore their enchantments or something?”

“Oh, yeah!” The snake brightened, “That’ll get us out!” Relieved, it settled deeper into the crook of Gwen’s arm to try to remember a key part of the life of the fairy it had eaten that would surely be easy to find. “I uh…” If it could, it would be sweating, but the snake had to settle for nervous tongue flicking at a rapid pace. “I’m sure… I can…”

“-uck it.” The tail end of David’s sentence was abruptly audible as he appeared to step into existence. Upon full entry into the fairy ring, he perfunctorily shook the jar he was holding, “If you just got me trapped in here, I’ll- Max!” It seemed the thing in the jar had pointed past David to where Max and Gwen stood, making him turn in the correct direction. The severity to his expression fell entirely away and he tucked the faintly glowing jar under his arm, “You’re alright! Thank goodness!” He paused. “You are alright, right?”

“We were literally _just_ about to save ourselves.” Max flicked the snake’s side, supposedly addressing it rather than David, “If you had only been able to remember a single name in time.”

“And Gwen,” Gwen added, belatedly. “Gwen is also okay.”

“And also my favorite camping buddy,” David corrected without missing a step, “who I’m sure, along with Max, could definitely have gotten out of this situation without my interference, yes. Let’s go, anyway.” Max bristled at the failed attempt to assuage his pride and opened his mouth for what would definitely be a well-reasoned and kind explanation of how that sort of patronizing statement made him feel.

“I can’t remember my name!” The snake cried out suddenly, “I mean, the fairy’s name! We really can’t get out!” Max’s glower transferred immediately to the snake.

“Yes, I _know_ ,” David hissed and nearly gave the poor snake a panic attack before it realized he was addressing the jar. He unscrewed the lid, ignoring the snake entirely, and released a small mote of silver fire to float up above them. With a flash of light, it twisted into a moonlit hare that landed lightly in the grass.

The hare spoke with a high, clear voice, “You have kept your word. I will take it from here.”

“ _That’s_ a fairy,” Gwen murmured and the snake nodded mutely.

“Mine was bird shaped,” it eventually whispered back to her. Clearly, this was not a fight it wanted to wage again.

David had his arms crossed over his chest and cold eyes weighing on the fairy now taking stock of the foreign ring.

“There is no other fairy here,” the hare declared softly, turning towards David and twitching a soft nose before it spoke again. “I do not need to negotiate. You are strong enough. Remove an anchor from the soil.”

“And I won’t die,” David said leadingly.

“You will not die,” it confirmed. “I cannot lie.”

With a nod, David crouched down at the line of mushrooms and gripped one by the base. His first tug didn’t actually get him anywhere, but as he strained, cracks began to appear in the blur around them. He exhaled sharply and put his weight into it. The mushroom ripped free.

As the world around them came back into sharp focus, revealing Anita hovering anxiously by the edge of the mushrooms, Gwen raised the snake closer to her face. “Could we have just done that this whole time?”

It would be wise not to let Max hear if the answer turned out to be yes.

“N- no. Rings aren’t actually physical, they- I, uh...” The snake slid up to her shoulders, looping loosely around her neck and hiding just under one ear. David flicked a curious glance at it, but didn’t make a move since Gwen seemed fine. It flinched closer to her neck. “No, that’s not normal.”

“Good to know,” she nodded.

Meanwhile, Max had sidled up to David, ostensibly to examine where the ring had once been. He kicked the dirt briefly, then bent down to pluck a few more pieces of the fairy ring out of the ground like that had been his goal all along. His eyes tracked up to David and immediately shot back down to his hands when he met the man's expectant gaze.

He really hated when David saw through him like that.

And, though it was rare, it was happening more and more often.

“If I was talking to you,” he said, picking idly at the remnants of the newly shriveled mushrooms, “I’d probably have to ask if you really lost sight of us, panicked, hunted down the nearest potential threat and then forced it to find us with the promise not to kill it.” He clapped his hands together, cleaning them of any remaining bits, “Good thing I can just assume that’s what happened instead of talking to someone who’s letting my _father’s sister_ lead us somewhere to get ambushed.”

That was a good start to getting Max to talk to him again, at least. Monologued summaries of David’s behavior. Yes, clearly this was the way.

...David wanted a class specialized for parents with children smarter than them.

No matter how lost Max tended to make him feel, still he had to _try_. Everything had to start somewhere, right? “Max, I-”

Very obviously, Max turned his head away and stalked off towards Gwen, who seemed to be making some sort of bargain with the snake.

“Right,” David said quietly, crossing his arms over his chest. He needed to make sure the fairy would go without another fight, anyway. It was- was currently…

He gave the clearing another once-over.

It was gone.

Smart.

Time to get moving… and go back to his self-appointed task of making sure Anita wasn’t sending a message ahead. While cell phones should have all run out of power some time ago, a select few seemed to be in perfect working order - as long as neither David nor Gwen touched them. Gwen’s running theory was that something that liked kids had control of the cellphones and David wasn’t able to come up with anything better. Max just enjoyed the monopoly.

Not that they really had anyone to call.

Either way, Anita could send up a signal flare or leave markings or any variety of signalling. She could even be leading them right to wherever Max’s parents were living.

He’d watch out for it but if it happened, he’d just have to deal with it. Sure, he’d let the Thakurs go back on their word once. However, if Max cooperated with him - even out of spite for the Thakurs since he wasn’t on speaking terms with David quite yet - they’d be able to escape again, if it came to it.

Even if Max didn’t cooperate.

But David didn’t like to think about those options.

Distractions would be welcome, just then.

“Alright, Anita,” David clapped a hand on her shoulder where she was trying futilely to speak to Max. He wasn’t giving her the time of day, either. At the contact, she jumped practically out of her skin. However, she didn’t reach for where she’d once had a gun. David gave her a small smile for that, “Let’s get moving, huh? We’re burning daylight!”

Her eyes tracked his movements warily but she started forward once more, glancing back occasionally to check on Max and Gwen. They had decided that safety outweighed boredom and were following Anita and David to keep their chances of stumbling into another fairy ring low. David was checking them more often, too. It hurt his head to split his attention between three different kinds of safekeeping, but it wasn’t any worse than when he’d had the full group of campers to look after.

He missed them.

But he still had Max, and Max… did care. In a way.

And Gwen! Of course.

David was doubly blessed, in that way. They both knew the truth. And there they were.

He looked back again, spotting the tell tale signs of a squabble between the two. They were still checking their surroundings, but… It was clear they trusted something else to keep them safe.

Someone.

Whether or not Max was saying a word to him, that was still true.

David quirked a smile, making Anita stumble for a moment before tracking back to where he’d been looking beforehand and narrowing her eyes.

“Look,” she said, suddenly. “I don’t know where it is you get off on the idea of stealing a kid; maybe you think you’ve got some kind of claim to him, but Max belongs with his _family_. We have- We- We’re safer than almost anyone, right now. And stronger together.”

“Max doesn’t feel safe with your family,” David retorted quietly. Better not let Max hear him telling an ‘enemy’ that he had _feelings_. “And I believe him.”

“Of course he’s safe,” Anita’s hands clenched. “Do you really think it’s better for him to be with a- a deviant like you in the woods instead of in an established settlement with people who love him?”

“I believe _him_ ,” David repeated, “and that means you’ve got your facts wrong.”

“How so?” Her knuckles were pale and tight.

Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? Max had told him himself.

“Other than his friends, everyone that loves him is here,” David replied flatly, smile gone. He gave her a sidelong look. “And I’m not sure about you.”

Normally, Anita would have shouted someone down for even implying she didn’t love her nephew. Or that her _brother_ didn’t love his _son_. Normally, she’d be more offended than anything.

But there was a certainty in David’s voice. Like he’d questioned it already and come up sure.

Hah, what was she thinking? Anita shook off the unsettled feeling. Of course a madman would be certain. That’s what made them mad.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hissed.

Shuttered blue-green eyes met hers for a moment more before he turned ahead in silence. He picked up the pace and after checking that Max and Gwen were doing the same, she scrambled to keep up. The conversation was clearly over.

Anita wasn’t sure exactly what it had revealed.

.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!”

The voice was unfamiliar with an inhuman sibilance, so David could assume it came from the snake. He turned back towards Gwen and her hitchhiker expectantly.

They’d been making good time according to Anita. She wasn’t telling them their end destination, since she wasn’t an idiot. Once they knew exactly where the settlement was, she lost any bargaining chip she might have had. But she thought they might make it there in less than a day, if they kept up the pace.

At this point, they had passed into a less-than-normal section of the world, where the forest had abruptly given way to something… different. It seemed like rolling plains, if not for the fact that this was too far north for this kind of lush grassland. Additionally, the grasses and, oddly, ferns that made up most of the vegetation were shades ranging from a dusky rose to a pale yellow, like someone had painted a hazy sunset onto the land. Here and there were splashes of a bruised violet that seemed to fade in and out of existence as the grasses sedately waved in the near-constant soft breeze.

And now there was a stream, clear but faintly glowing with veins of luminous gold in the stones it ran over. David had just been assessing how to get over something so obviously magical when the snake had called out its warning.

“That glow, that only happens when…” The snake shook its head, color undulating down its coils as it thought. “There’s something in there. It’s supposed to stay in the Caribbean, but… Nothing’s been right.”

“Can we bargain with it?” Gwen asked, petting the snake without thinking as she spoke. It submitted readily to her fingers with a semi-hysterical laugh.

“I think it’s… a masacurraman.” The proclamation was sufficiently dramatic, but when there was no reaction beyond David unsheathing his knife, the snake nearly flashed with color. “It’s horrifically strong. It’s tall and hairy and it _smells_ and it _eats people_. It lives in the surface of the water and where it lives, gold grows in the water below its home. Gold the color of their eyes that glows stronger the more people it’s killed.”

“The stream has gold streaks as far as we can see,” Max pointed out, reaching uncomfortably for the baseball bat Gwen was holding out to him. She had one metal and one wooden bat sticking out of her pack most days, but now Max held the smaller, metal one in the stance she’d beaten into him and she had her wooden bat at the ready.

Gwen had minors in nearly everything, and that included physical education.

Sometimes Max was almost impressed, until he remembered that despite how much bullshit Gwen had pulled out of her college experience, it was still mostly bullshit.

“What draws them out?” Gwen demanded, pushing Max back with one foot and grabbing David by the back of the shirt to keep him from just issuing a challenge or something. Anita followed their lead, though Gwen honestly didn’t care if she got eaten. They were close enough now that as long as Anita was actually going the right direction, they could probably find the settlement on their own.

...Oh damn, David was rubbing off on her.

Gwen mentally edited her thoughts; she _did_ care if Anita, another human being, got eaten. She just wasn’t willing to risk herself for the woman.

There we go.

“Hunger,” the snake whispered, coiling closer. “Hunger brings them out.”

“And there’s a lot of them,” Gwen ventured, already seeing the surface of the water stir unnaturally.

“So prey is scarce,” David concluded, having followed the conversation without comment until this point.

“Oh, fuck this.” Anita lunged and, for once, her sudden movement paid off. Quick as a flash, she had Max in her arms and set off back into the plains.

It would’ve seemed like an escape attempt if it weren’t for one minor detail.

Almost unthinkingly, she shouted back at them over Max’s cursing, “Run, you idiots!”

Right. Not every enemy should be fought.

They scrambled after her as the first hairy hands, inhumanly stretched and large, formed on the bank out of protrusion in the water's surface, somehow separate from the current beneath. As the small group dashed desperately away through the serenely swaying, pastel grass, David found himself laughing.

She’d just saved her own kidnappers. For now, anyway. He could hear their pursuers gaining ground behind them in thumps and quiet grunting as the behemoths swarmed closer. 

And she’d secured Max first.

Maybe Anita wasn’t so terrible. Just…

Misguided.

It might be possible to set her straight.


	3. Hearing Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for some suicidal ideation; very quick I promise lol

“Wow!” David swung around, tossing a masacurraman to the ground. It had outstripped its companions and lunged, forcing him to intercept. Now it was downed, so Gwen turned and smacked it with her bat for good measure. 

It did not seem overly affected by the blunt force, merely narrowing one glowing golden eye at her.

She stumbled back into a run in no time.

“Good effort!” David called after her, running himself. He would have tried to sink a knife into the creature’s eye and finish the job, normally. However, there were a few too many of its friends on their tail. Not only would that eat up valuable time, but for now there was a chance they’d give up. Kill a member of their pack right in front of them and David had a funny feeling that chance would crumble to ashes.

Too bad. The blood probably would have glowed, given the usual logic of magical beings. Plus they seemed very expressive, with the glower that one had shot Gwen.

What sacrifices he made for their continued safety.

At least the near-constant adrenaline spikes were keeping him from getting too twitchy. Sort of. Okay, not really, but he’d be fine. They’d all be fine.

Or dead, very soon.

Hopefully Max would survive this. He wanted Gwen and himself to make it, too, of course, but David was… Well, he was tired. Even with his heart pounding in his ears with all the force of a jet engine.

Anita was very fast. Max would be fine.

And David still didn’t know what was happening to him. The thought hit his mind with the vicious entrance of a gold digger invited to a charity gala.

He could see them pulling ahead, feel his steps faltering.

Feel his pace slow.

A wave of noise preceded their pursuers, coming ever closer. It’d be so easy to stop. Easy to let them engulf him. The masacurraman would swarm around him, giving the others time to escape. Gwen might want to turn back for him, but he doubted she’d notice before it was too late. She was pragmatic; she’d know to keep going then. She could keep Max safe, even if Anita tried to take him back to his parents.

Max would be fine.

But… He couldn’t guarantee that, could he? Not if he wasn’t there.

David leaned into a run. Away from the pack behind them.

Forward.

That had been… Close. Quick, though. He was getting better at redirecting. Someday he hoped he’d stop having these arguments with himself, but that was clearly not today.

Or any day if they didn’t find a way to lose the pack!

David redoubled his efforts, catching up to Anita and Gwen just as Max wriggled free of Anita’s hold. Without breaking stride, David scooped him up to the dulcet sound of Max’s surprised curse. He never even got both feet on the ground.

“We- gotta lose ‘em,” Gwen jumped over a red boulder jutting out of the pinkish soil.

“It’s _all grass_!” Anita shot back with a thin edge of hysteria, dodging another of the smooth boulders.

Suspiciously smooth. With a familiar, unfitting texture.

Max was smacking David’s shoulder, but he’d noticed, too, _thank you_. He just wasn’t sure how to make use of this information.

Soon the bag on his back was jerking as Max dug around for a moment before pulling out the radio with a, “Fuck yes!”

Of course a moment later, Max’s plan momentarily paused as David hopped neatly over the rounded curve of another large stone. Not getting dropped was kind of important now that he was holding the radio.

“We can’t radio for help!” Gwen exclaimed, seeing his death grip on the device. “It only receives!”

She really did set him up perfectly sometimes. Max felt a grin break out across his face to cover up the recent cold sweat. “Just watch me call in back-up!” With that, he slid the dial to the right channel and turned the volume all the way up.

An unearthly shrieking filled the air.

“RUN FASTER!” Max demanded over the multi-tonal assault on the senses.

Stumbling at the sudden shift in atmosphere, Anita shouted back, “I mean OBVIOUSLY?”

Soon Gwen and David found themselves reassessing exactly what had tripped Anita up as the ground shifted beneath their feet.

“Shit, _run faster_ , got it!” Gwen had her hand hooked in Anita’s arm in a second, dragging the other woman to a faster pace without hesitation. All around them, the prairie shivered and cracked, pastel pink dirt crumbling as a force rose from below.

“Why was this a good plan?” David shrieked above the radio _right in his ear_. A coil of thick red unearthed itself before him and he slid hastily beneath it with an expletive. “You woke it up!”

“Exactly,” Max murmured, satisfaction sitting sly and plump in the words. Despite the chokehold he now had on David - thanks to the acrobatics Max had _caused_ \- he still had his fingers tangled in the wrist strap of the small crank radio. The inhuman screaming should have drowned him out.

David heard him crystal clear.

Now was not the time to linger on that.

Not with the coils of a dragon rising from the earth.

“What the fuck is this?” Gwen ducked through a larger coil, getting dusted in a fine layer of pink dirt. “Seriously, how fucked up can this day get!”

“Wyrm,” the snake whimpered under Gwen’s ear. “We’re all gonna die. They have voracious appetites.” It made a quiet keening noise and slithered towards her bag, nudging its nose into the opening to hide.

The platypus stared back at it from where she was smushed between Gwen’s clothes and a canteen.

“Oh no,” the snake said softly.

A small explosion of terrifying platypus noises preceded Gwen’s bat smacking back over her shoulder into the side of her own bag, startling the platypus into complacency and allowing the bloodied but still living snake to retreat.

“Save it!” she berated them incredulously, dodging the whipping end of a tail longer than her list of useless academic achievements. “We need to survive before you kill each other!”

“Okay!” Max ended the torment, switching off the radio, but leaving the echoes of the horrible sound ringing in their ears for probably a year. “Now everybody shut up and run quieter!”

“Quieter?” Anita shot back. “Than that screeching?”

“Than those fucknuts,” Max retorted, pointing over David’s shoulder at the hooting and hollering pack of masacurraman behind them.

The… diminished pack. Several had dropped out of the running due to serious injury.

“Good job, buddy!” David praised as the wyrm ripped into another of the hairy creatures with teeth that might have resembled a shark’s if they weren’t each the size of a small one. It was a good thing they’d passed the tail. That kept the head rather far away, even with the number of loops and coils in the scaled body in between.

“Shhhut up!” Max hissed back, glaring directly at David instead of in his general direction.

Progress.

Still, no matter how angrily delivered, the advice was sound. David followed Anita and Gwen further away, until the slick rips and crunches overtook the fevered shouts of the masacurraman. Eventually even that faded into the distance.

It was yet another moment where the world was clearly different; scarier and upended and… Well, it was dangerous in so many strange new ways.

Rosy red scratched at their arms and legs as they dashed through the grass. Labored panting and the pounding of feet kept time as bugs buzzed in a ceaseless drone that only grew louder as the sun set, lending their surroundings a dusky purple hue that wiped away the bloody shine of the grass.

They kept running until they were too tired to take another step.

Camp was quiet, that night.

“We’re more south than we should be.” Knees up against her chest, Anita stared into the fire as she spoke. They’d cleared an area of grass for the fire despite Gwen’s worries about using the odd plants for kindling. Too many things were awake at night that liked the dark. Luckily, the red grass seemed to catch easily, but burn a good long while. It was weird having a fire without wood beyond the odd stick. Anita dug her toes into the pastel pink dirt, “But we can still make it tomorrow.”

“Good to know,” Gwen nudged the possibly-hazardous fire with a stick. Not to increase the airflow, but because she was bored and David wouldn’t fight her tonight. He was busy ‘controlling himself’ right now, so Gwen wasn’t getting anywhere near that. She’d made that mistake once after a similarly near-death encounter where David hadn’t really gotten to fight.

Even now, she could flash that scar and make David curl up into an apologetic ball of shame. 

Granted, it was barely a nick because she and Max had started shouting him down before he really lost it - and Gwen had knocked him _out_ once Max got his attention - but still. It had hurt. It might have gotten infected. She might have startled him first but David deserved that shame.

Seriously. If the world hadn’t ended she would _not_ be following him around.

But it had.

And she was _never_ living in that b-

Well, she was _not_ moving back in with her parents.

“Nope,” she said aloud, moving her somewhat on-fire stick nonchalantly into Anita’s path. The other woman had gotten up and started in David’s general direction. Now blocked, Anita put her hands on her hips as if Gwen was bullying her instead of saving her life. “Bad idea all around.”

“Yeah, that way lies death if you’re not me or some other adorable kid,” Max rolled his eyes at his own words, his hands hidden deep in his pockets as he curled slightly around them in contrast to his bland tone. “He’s not like, super out of it right now but I’d still call it a defcon three.”

“He gave me this scar last time I messed with him like this,” Gwen elaborated, pulling up the side of her shirt to show the remnants of a glancing blow from a serrated knife. Anita flinched back slightly. Gwen sounded like she was innocently doing show and tell, but the smirk on her face showed she was enjoying Anita’s repulsion a little too much. “He gets a little jumpy, you know?”

“Yeah, he bit into a live squirrel once ‘cause it startled him,” Max added suddenly. His face was too blank. Even if Gwen hadn’t known it was a lie, she’d know from the lack of expression that Max was just adding to the fire. “Just grabbed it right off the tree and bit through its spine.”

She sent Max a knowing look while Anita paled. Gwen leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially, “One time, he stabbed a bush and told it to think about its sins.”

“A few days ago, he left for a night and came back with weird red markings painted all over him.” Eyes narrowed her direction, Max had taken up the gauntlet Gwen had thrown down. It was clear. One of them was going to make Anita shit herself. “Occult looking shit. Then he didn’t eat for _three_ days.”

“He asked me how my nan was doing seconds after I thought about her, then muttered something about a final visit and wandered off when I tried to respond.” At this point, Gwen was struggling to keep a straight face.

A wave of the hand, and Max couldn’t fight his own smirk as he replied, “He told me not to worry about that; the voices keep him up to date.”

She pointed a finger into the conversation as if to physically interrupt Max’s logic, leaning toward him with raised eyebrows and half a grin, “He said he didn’t hear the voices anymore! They’ve been drowned out by the screaming.”

That mean little thing that David called a smile slipped onto Max’s face, “He actu-”

Two large, pale hands clapped down, one each on Gwen and Max’s shoulders.

“He can hear you,” David informed them with a strained half smile. “Please stop making things up. I’ve never-” he frowned, cutting himself off. During that moment of pensive silence, Anita stared at him, wide-eyed, until he corrected, “I _don’t_ hear voices.”

“You did before?” Max asked incredulously, immediately dropping his blank face as he cottoned on to the omission.

Hands held up defensively, David protested, “It was the Kronics. They were real.”

“True,” Gwen transferred the pointing to him, nodding, before the implications hit and her finger drooped. In the flickering half light of the overly red flames, the lines of her face were stark with shadow, “Wait, what did they say?”

“Oh, the usual things evil spirits trapped somewhere they can’t be evil say, you know,” David laughed a little uneasily. “L̦͉̻̘̠͋̋͐ë́̔́̌ͦ̓t̙̤̗͍̺̍ ͛͐̋̊̈́ú̥͎̩͋̓̂ͥ͌s̥͙̼͙̼̰̤ ͕̱̺͇̾͗̑͋́̚̚o͔̱̥̖̍ͭ͂ṳ̤͕̞̈t͈ͨ̾͌͐ͅ and all that.”

Max stared.

“Makes sense,” Gwen said with a shrug, turning back to the fire and abandoning the game now that David was listening. She fully believed David might have heard the Kronics at some point before now. After all, he’d known _something_ was up for six years.

Meanwhile, Max was in no way okay with what David had said. Or rather, how he’d said it. His fingers gripped each other painfully in his hoodie pocket.

Okay, what?

What the fuck?

Pretty sure that just happened, Max couldn’t help but notice that neither Gwen nor Anita were reacting. Actually, neither was David.

Was anyone going to even _ask_ the obvious question?

“Did you not just hear that?” Max’s voice rose in a sudden crescendo, startling the local wildlife into silence and making his next words all the starker for it. He waved a hand accusingly, “David, what the fuck just happened with your _voice_?”

David and Gwen looked equally bewildered, but Anita shifted a little further away from David. 

“Max,” she asked carefully, “what did you hear?”

“I-”

Huh. As he took in the scene, Max cut himself off from the instinctive response of _David speaking in three different fucking time zones_.

Anita looked… Kind of eager. Wary, and a little freaked out, but… She was leaning towards Max, still seated but with her weight forward on the balls of her feet. Definitely eager.

She knew something.

She might have even heard it and just not… reacted. Outwardly, anyway.

Between Anita and David, the choice was clear. Even if David had no idea what was going on. Max glanced between the two and shoved his jangled nerves back into some sense of order, as well as his hands back into his pockets. Anita wasn’t getting anything from him. 

He laughed mockingly, “I heard David’s voice crack like a greasy pubescent boy is what!”

“Max,” David sighed, settling down by the fire and resting his chin on his hand. “That hurt a little bit.”

“Score,” Max cheered himself, before abruptly gaining a serious expression and clapping his hands together to tilt them David’s direction. He was going to focus on David to avoid obviously noticing Anita’s disappointment. If he could act oblivious, then maybe he could buy himself time to figure out what had her so creepily fucking excited. “Could you give me a rating for that pain on a scale of one to ten, with one being a stubbed toe and ten being a child telling you that your songs inspired them to finally kill themselves and thanking you?”

Relief that Max was talking to him again and emotional pain at the very idea of what Max was saying visibly chased each other around David’s face until Max stepped a little closer.

“Five?” He prompted. “Six?”

A wrinkled nose from the counselor preceded his resigned admission of, “Three.”

“Three?” That was offensive. That was a _lie_. Max never slung an insult that would hit anywhere below a four. And no, Max was not in any way distracting himself, just Anita. Yes. “Fuck you, David, that was a five, at least.”

“I have gained resistance,” David informed him with raised hands as if praising something divine for this development.

Like the gods would help _David_. Max was pretty sure they wouldn’t have been down with a lot of David’s decisions, but smashing open part of the Kronic’s seal was probably the major no. Even if it only let out, essentially, magic.

The shit the world was going through wasn't their fault, anyway. Max and David hadn’t shaped what formed. The world had done that.

“Oh, cool, you’re not a noob anymore,” Max plopped down beside him. He’d kind of missed having something better than a bedroll to lean on. Not that it had to be David, but Gwen was… He glanced over where Gwen was trying to get Anita’s opinion on some smutty magazine the platypus hadn’t shredded yet, giggling as Anita tried desperately to escape. Or leaned politely away, in any case.

Whatever. Gwen and he had a mutual apathy in addition to her gross taste in literature. 

Max shrugged, “I’ll just have to take off the training wheels.”

Casually, he leaned into David’s side. His shoulders drooped slightly from where they’d taken up residence under his ears as David wrapped an arm around him without a word. Not that he’d thought the sap would reject him or anything. There was no chance of that, of course.

Not like that one time they hadn’t really gotten to talk about before the volcano exploded and David revealed the depths of his impossible foolishness by claiming he _loved_ Max. Which Max could pretty much believe, given the other evidence of David’s lacking grip on reality that confronted him practically every day.

Putting that shit aside for a quieter, safer time - if that ever happened again - Max pondered the intelligence of sleeping next to David when he’d _just_ done something _extra_ freaky. ...But he was going to have to wake David up to talk to him about that later, whenever Anita fell asleep.

In the meantime, it was more comfortable leaning on David than a tree trunk, that was for sure. 

Max pressed his face into David’s side and returned the hug with both arms. To hold him up better while he slept, of course. Falling asleep here would be faster than laying awake in his bedroll and listening to every single woodland creature chitter and jump around. Or in this case, prairie animals and bugs. The rosy grass still swayed gently around them, proving they hadn’t gone _too_ far off track that day.

If there was even a human settlement at the end of this.

Maybe it would just be Max’s family, all grouped up for an ambush.

David and Gwen could probably win, if they didn’t have guns, but… Avoiding that risk was probably a good idea. Max ignored how his mind flinched and his stomach clenched from the idea of what it would mean for David and Gwen to win, arranging his legs so he was fully resting his weight on David.

“Hey Max?” David briefly squeezed his shoulders, voice soft, “I love you, kiddo.”

Green eyes snapped up to David’s, wide with incredulity. “Oh, my _god_ , David! Don’t just say that shit for no reason!” He felt his cheeks heat at the verbal declaration of what he’d just been musing over.

Anita and Gwen were, like, _right there_. Granted, they weren’t paying attention last he checked and it was probably obvious anyway, since David was an open book with _illustrations_. 

Still, there was no reason to go around dropping the L word where it could ruin his rep! And also, why? Just why the hell was David such a ridiculous sap? Why say it now? Literally nothing had prompted this.

A tired smile grew on David’s face. “I have a reason.” He lifted a finger and tapped Max’s forehead, “My reason is that I love you.”

Wow, that was… gross. And also, now he was noticing Anita noticing the conversation and she was noticing his noticing and _argh_. Max had gotten used to just having Gwen nearby, but at least Anita looked more pissed off than judgey about the whole using-David-as-a-leaning-post situation that other people would probably describe as cuddling. That was a win.

“Shut up, David.” Max determinedly closed his eyes.

There was still that creeper’s glare Anita had going on across the way, but that was whatever.

Max was fine with pissing Anita off.

She hadn’t ever noticed anything was wrong.

Now, though, it was time to sleep and ignore whatever the hell was going on with David, at least until Anita fell asleep and he could talk with him alone. Or with Gwen. Either way.

So he pushed it all from his mind, along with Anita’s weak as shit glares and Gwen’s giggles as she read her magazine with the platypus and snake. Which was maybe weirder than David’s voice twisting like a river’s eddies.

The snake’s commentary was the last thing he heard as he drifted off. Its hiss was plaintive and clear, despite the distance between them.

“...don’t understand the benefit of training one’s body to bend like _that_ …”

.

“David.” Max shoved the scratchy grey bedroll off of them and scooted a bit away from the sleeping man, before hissing more urgently, “ _David_.”

As he anticipated, David sat bolt upright, hand landing on the knife still strapped to his side before he blinked blearily Max’s direction. “What…?”

Relaxing now that David was awake, Max jerked his head towards his sleeping aunt and stood. Anita was draped over Gwen’s bedroll, hair half done in a million small braids that had clearly been abandoned at some point in the night. One arm was tossed over a nearby rock and she was snoring lightly. Gwen was leaning on the other side of the large rock, taking her turn to keep watch. She glanced at them and visibly sighed before rolling her eyes and turning around, draped over the top of the boulder like a depressed sloth. Waving them off to whatever nonsense they were up to, she set about continuing the trail of braids on Anita’s head.

David, however, had yet to rise.

Impatiently, Max tapped his foot and gestured away from the dead coals that made up the center of their camp for the night. Towards the rolling hills of grass that swayed seemingly endlessly into the horizon. Odd how nearly every new area seemed to expand to take up as much visible space as possible regardless of physical size.

But that wasn’t important right then.

Slowly, David pushed himself to his feet with a wary glance that Max, honestly, deserved. Despite his clear reservations, he followed Max out of earshot of the camp. 

“What’s going on, Max?” he asked, his hoarse voice a testament to exactly how little sleep David had been getting.

“Well, for one, you sound like a frog shitted in your throat and that’s totally a point in my fucking favor that you’re not eating or sleeping enough but right now,” Max prodded David in the stomach with a sharp nail, the run-on sentence pausing just enough to allow the senseless violence to intrude, “I want to know what the hell happened with your voice _before_ and why nobody else heard it.”

“You… said it cracked earlier?” David attempted, rubbing a hand over his face as if to wipe away the lack of sleep. If he ignored Max’s accusations about not sleeping enough, maybe they would go away. He sat down heavily in the grass, disregarding the possibility of magical ticks as he did, and asked, “Would you mind explaining just a teensy bit more, buddy?”

“Your voice, like, fucked off into the words around it for a second,” Max offered immediately, making zero sense and immediately gleaning that fact from the blank half-smile on David’s stupid face. “Look, it was like… Like _let_ us _out_ or…” Gripping his hair and trying not to be embarrassed at how his voice had just completely failed to capture the ominous tone of David’s, Max tried again. “It was- you know. L̦͉̻̘̠͋̋͐ë́̔́̌ͦ̓t̙̤̗͍̺̍ ͛͐̋̊̈́ú̥͎̩͋̓̂ͥ͌s̥͙̼͙̼̰̤ ͕̱̺͇̾͗̑͋́̚̚o͔̱̥̖̍ͭ͂ṳ̤͕̞̈t͈ͨ̾͌͐ͅ.”

He clapped a hand over his mouth.

David froze.

They stared at each other in horrified silence. Or, rather, the bugs droned impassively around them uncontested for a long moment.

“Holy fuck,” Max said finally, looking down at his hands and back up at David, briefly forgetting David was an idiot who would in no way have the answers. Mentally waving off that moment of weakness, Max coughed and clenched his throat in that peculiar way again. “Can I-҉ ͞Cheddar Cheęsu͜s̴ on a ̡fucki҉ng͡ po͠go s͏tick, I ͝c͝a̸n͘ j̢us̢t do thi͡s ̕w͝hen̴e͝v̵er Į ̷wa̶nt.̵ ͝Hoļy shįt̢. ̡Ho̴l͝y̵ ͘fuck͢in͢g ͝s͢hit! ̢O͝h m̕y̡-”

“Stop,” David blurted, putting a hand over Max’s mouth to stop the way his voice was distorting and bending almost exactly like the Kronics’ had. “Please, Max. Give me a second.” Obliging mostly because of the panic in David’s eyes rather than any real desire to do so, Max huffed out a breath against David’s hand and kept quiet. “And that’s… what you heard?” The pitch of the question spiked pathetically at the end, as if David was somehow hoping for a _no_.

Max nodded and David cursed.

Pushing the hand over his mouth down, Max attempted to head off whatever David was thinking, “I mean, I was pretty worried that demons were going to like, crawl out of you like a swarm of bugs from a skin suit, but now I can do that, too, and I think I’m smart enough to know if I were possessed. It’s probably some sort of weird as shit contamination from being near the seal too long.” 

He paused, waiting for David to agree but there was only a quiet open and shut of the mouth before David gave up trying to speak. He dropped his head into his hands, and Max tried not to worry.

“It’s probably fine, David,” he ventured again, hands hovering without his permission over David’s person but not yet touching, at least. “You’re not hearing voices anymore and you feel… the same as before, right?”

The very minute he said it, Max realized it had not been the right thing to say. In other words, Max desperately wished he could cram the sentence back into his mouth, chew, and spit the shitty phrasing back into hell, from whence it had come.

Everything was different.

“I mean, you don’t feel like a Kronic, now,” he amended hastily. “You don’t want to twist the world out of existence or anything. I, uh-” Crap. He was running out of placating bullshit. This called for action plan H. Wrapping his arms around David’s shoulders, he rested his cheek in somewhat greasy red hair and patted the back of his neck. “Don’t fucking lose it on me now, okay?”

“I’m not losing it,” David’s muffled voice gave Max the slightest hint of relief when it came. Abruptly, Max found himself being lifted from the ground as David grabbed him, rising to his feet. Caught off guard, Max only held on tighter rather than kicking him in the stomach for the manhandling. “I do think we need to figure out where we are and get Quartermaster on the phone, though.”

“...Good idea,” Max admitted, pleasant surprise coloring his tone. “Count me out of making that call, though.”

Moving through the grass bending fluidly in a _constant_ idyllic breeze like something out of a story book, David pointed out, “You are the only one the phone works for, Max. It just directs Gwen and me to a receptionist in New Jersey who is admirably devoted to his job.”

“It likes me best,” Max agreed with relish. “A wise decision.”

“Sure,” David conceded gracefully. He was pretty sure the phone only worked for Max because the magic gently decimating the world’s population was probably fond of him for _not_ dying and sealing it away forever.

Or something.

Although the flora and fauna of this brave new world still had it out for him.

Alright, David had no idea why the phone worked for Max. It was a mystery and it would remain a mystery as long as it _kept_ working.

As they approached, Gwen frustratedly dropped the braid she was holding and pointed from David to where she’d been sitting with tense, jerky motions. That done, she threw her hands up and stomped - quietly - to David’s blankets.

It was probably just a little past time to change the watch.

Given that fact, David plopped Max down by Gwen. They eyed each other with mutual distrust, but since Anita had Max’s bedroll and was sleeping on top of Gwen’s, there was little choice in the matter.

It was not in the least surprising they ended up irritably clutching opposite ends of their respective scratchy grey halves of blanket. Granted, it was not a large blanket, so they were still nearly back to back. They both felt their point had been made, however.

Unable to help it at this point, David smiled at the sight. He was just inured enough to their constant friendly aggression to find it cute.

He kept that thought in mind as he fed the oddly combustible grass to the fire and took up guard duty. Its warmth shielded him just enough from reality’s creeping cold that he could spend his shift mindlessly soaking in the ominous beauty of the grasslands instead of worrying himself in circles. Not the worst way to pass the night.

However, as dawn’s pale light trickled up into a sea of open sky, David took a deep, steadying breath and allowed himself to refocus. They would make it to wherever Anita was leading them, tomorrow. A human settlement, an ambush, or some as of yet unknown option. In the end, it barely mattered. They’d learn if it was an answer to their winter problem or an answer to what to do about Anita.

Tomorrow, one way or another, at least one worry would end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 9/19: I've changed one word in here from 'after' to 'before' because it was wrong lol


	4. Welcome to Standing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've been working on this chapter a long time because I couldn't decide who was going to be in town and who wasn't lol
> 
> Then it snowed unseasonably early IRL and I took it as a sign to get moving, so here you are.

The radio was left on that night. Max had been fiddling with it until Gwen told him to knock it off in a tone that brooked no arguments. Not that Max was going to entirely obey. He turned the volume low on a channel that no longer broadcasted as a small act of rebellion. So it was only gentle static that filled the temporary camp as the three humans and their companions slept.

.

They woke to a snowstorm.

“Oh, come on,” Max complained, shoving his arms hastily into the jacket Gwen had insisted they pick up at the last abandoned shopping center. “This is not how winter fucking works. There hasn’t been a ‘white Christmas’ for as long as I can remember and now the sky decides to open up and shit all over us before the leaves even drop?”

“It is unseasonably early,” Gwen agreed, putting on her own jacket and throwing David’s at Anita, who pushed sleep-mussed hair out of her face to accept the offering with at least a little grace. She gave Gwen a thumb’s up that was easily returned.

“We should resume our journey,” Anita informed them quietly. It was strange. Despite the wind and snow filling his ears with a sound not unlike a continuous _shush_ , Max could make out her words clearly. Or maybe he was just filling in the gaps. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious what she was going to say.

Either way, she was ignoring one important detail. Annoyance snapped in Max’s tone as he reminded her, “David’s still on watch.”

Gwen and Anita turned to look at him together. This was… a normal reaction to someone talking. Still, something about their expressions made his hair stand on edge. 

A frown played briefly at Gwen’s brow before it smoothed out to that lack again and she asked, “Who?”

“David,” Max repeated, louder. The storm was picking up in intensity and his fingers were beginning to hurt. He shoved them into his armpits and shouted sardonically over the wind, “Your best and probably only friend?”

“Max,” Anita was beside him. Her hair was pulled back in its customary braid and her round face was lined with concern. She touched his arm, “Who is David?”

Max jerked back from the contact, incredulously looking from Anita to Gwen. Both of them stared back at him in growing concern, snow swirling between them in waves of white that obscured none of their sincere confusion.

“Nope,” Max decided. Something was wrong. “David!” he called out, lurching away from the two in the direction he’d seen David head towards last night. The two women called out his name behind him in eerie synchronicity, but they’d clearly been mind-whammied and fuck if Max was going to wait around for the same to happen to him. Especially since Max, for all his smarts, wasn’t exactly physically big enough to contain Gwen or Anita if they became violent.

He needed to find David, fast.

Ignored went the uneasy scrunching of his stomach in a series of unhappy cramps. That was for Gwen and Anita, obviously. Not because something might have eaten David and erased him from existence or-

Max crested a snow drift and found himself face-to-trunk with a towering conifer. He looked reflexively upward and had an immediate feeling of deja vu to a lesson David had given them on a random nature walk. He shook his head, unable to stop the knowledge that this was a fir tree of some sort from sliding to the forefront of his thoughts in a ridiculous sort of distraction that didn’t help at all in the current instant. Trying to focus on his surroundings, for just a moment longer, he could only take in the smooth bark and dense branches that made him ID the trees in the first place.

Questions of _where_ and _how_ vanished under irrelevant details more thoroughly the harder he pushed. He squinted his eyes as if that would make his thoughts stop slipping through his fingers like trout in a stream.

All around him, the storm blustered and whispered in a continuous drone.

“David!” he called out again, one hand steadying himself against the wind with the thick trunk of the stupid fucking fir tree. He may as well ignore his surroundings if he couldn’t even take them in, “Why the hell aren’t you answering?”

The storm. That would be one good reason that didn’t involve David being dead. Or the idiot fell asleep. And was buried under the snow. But not dead because David was too dumb to die to goddamn hypothermia.

Despite the frantic efforts of his heart beating, Max could only feel cold.

He turned immediately to angrier shouting as his only defense, “David, you smiley shitstain of a human being, where the fuck are you?”

Abruptly, Max could hear a drawn out whistle over the storm, seemingly coming from all around him. It stopped as suddenly as it began.

“ _Max._ ”

Everything inside him froze. Ice crystals cut sharply at his insides as Max turned toward the voice. It was undeniably David’s. It should have relieved him. But it was… It was stripped of something. Like someone had taken a razor to the words and removed what they deemed unnecessary.

Worse than the time-challenged word-vomit he’d heard before.

“David?” he answered, the name drawn from him unwillingly as the tide from shore. There was someone, maybe a few hundred feet away, standing between the trees. In the dim light of morning, with the snow swirling thick between them, Max could barely make them out. There was a hint of light that wasn’t flickering out - no. Nope. Max was not going to stand here in the snow and contemplate _pale glowing eyes_ on someone badly imitating David’s voice when he could _turn around and run_ -

Before he could even finish the thought, before his muscles could tense, the faraway face split in a visible smile of sharp, bone-white teeth. Abruptly it was before him, an emaciated version of David that didn’t have white, sideways eyes, didn’t have sharp teeth- he did, he did- he didn’t, he was _normal_ , but cold blasted between them-

“ _You will never be theirs, again_.”

Max didn’t scream when he shot upright beside Gwen in a mess of blankets and sweat, but she swatted blindly at him anyway.

Her mumble cracked only slightly over the static of the radio, “Go back to sleep, you walking disaster. You’re having a nightmare.”

For a long moment, Max could only stare at the back of her head. Hair loose and fallen over the pillow in the darkness, she had clearly not yet waken up. Not reacted to a snowstorm that had never happened. Not forgotten David and let him get replaced by… or turn into… whatever that was.

Slowly, Max turned away. Let his gaze run over the makeshift camp of the previous evening. Nothing had changed.

He reached for the radio and flicked it off, glancing once, twice, in the direction David had gone before deciding he’d rather not look away. Blankets were rearranged and Max turned on his side, facing the silhouette perched on a nearby boulder in vigilant stillness.

He looked the same.

Nothing had changed.

.

Amongst idyllic, rolling hills, a mostly human settlement crouched like a disgruntled spider. It squatted just past the red grasslands, where plants faded back into a friendlier green and took on a decidedly subtropical appearance, despite their sometimes reduced height. The town gave off an unfriendly feel with dark, squat masses of vine, stone and something that shimmered stacked beside and over one another in the limited space they were allowed in an organic sprawl. It appeared the living vines were holding the stones in place. They wrapped around and through the structure of the buildings, exuding a grey substance that shone blue only at the perfect angle between the cracks.

As it was out in the open, not a day from creatures like the masacurraman and a wyrm the size of a small hill, one might wonder how it had survived. If one wasn’t actually within sight of the town. The agreements allowing its existence were implied heavily on approach. Wooden signs warning travelers and inhabitants alike of the rules dotted the landscape in varying hands and colors. Many were common sense for a settlement of sapient beings, but a few stood out.

“For fuck’s sake, how many times do you need to underline _don’t harm the vines_?” Nose wrinkling with disdain, Max waved a hand at the current sign they were passing. The rules had started just after they could first see the town on the horizon. Given that that had been five minutes of walking previous, someone - or the entire town, as the different handwriting and styles would attest - was more than a tad worried.

Shrugging off the question, Gwen had her eyes fixed on the buildings ahead. She tapped a finger to her chin in thought. “What I’m wondering is where they got all that Black Phantus. We should be just north of midwest USA, so we’re not exactly near Brazil.” With a tip of her head she conceded, “Not that it really matters. It could just be stolen from a construction company or something.”

When the silence had finally penetrated her wall of thought, Gwen looked over at the others’ uncomprehending faces. Max summed up the general consensus succinctly, “...What the fuck are black Fantas, Gwen?”

Flushing from neck to ear, Gwen stammered, “The- the rock in the buildings. It’s got that grey swirl in the black that- Look, just shut up.”

A hint of amusement crept onto Max’s face with the dawning realization, “Hey Gwen, did you also minor in-”

“Yes, I also have a minor in geology and it would _have gotten me a job in oil_ if I’d just freaking majored in it!” She defended hastily, not giving Max even a second to get a jab in. There were no cracks in the armor of words as she was not stopping to breathe. “So don’t you _dare_ put your little verbal claws on my _honestly impressive_ breadth of education, mister!”

Curiously, David started to ask, “How many minors _do_ you-” But he couldn’t continue and still call himself a friend when faced with the sheer venom Gwen glared his way. Averting his gaze, he amended in a carefully neutral tone, “I’ve always known Gwen was super smart, Max, and I’m glad you have the opportunity to learn more about her outside a camp environment.”

“Does anyone truly care what it’s built from?” Anita asked, pushing ahead impatiently. She’d managed to untangle Gwen’s mess from her hair and braid it back that morning, so her temper had already been severely tested. Her voice held a tinge of something that lingered on the boundary between hope and fear, “We’re nearly there. Back to other _people_.”

A rustle of scale against Gwen’s jacket preceded the snake’s head peeking out of her collar. It flicked its tongue once, perplexed, “There’s plenty of people out here. Fairies and pukwudgies and the tall man and- oh.” It trailed off, voice going small at Anita’s scathing look. “Humans. Understood.”

“You’re people,” Gwen said to it firmly, fixing Anita glare for glare. The other woman looked away first, dodging what would have been an embarrassing collision with a palm tree the height of her waist.

“I can’t believe we’re just accepting the bonsai,” Max put in abruptly, changing the subject with all the tact of a wrecking ball. “Then again, I guess I can, since we had to accept the pastel wonderland we just escaped from and that tried to kill us in loads of fun and unusual ways.”

The only response he got was David’s pat to his shoulder as they trekked onward. Uncomfortably, he let the quiet walk alongside them, growing until they were all lost in its shadow. There was no hope of conversation when the only people he could talk with were all razor focused on the next step.

He should be, too.

Max just didn’t want to think about what might happen if his family _was_ lying in wait.

Whether they got him back or… didn’t. 

_You’ll never be theirs, again._ An involuntary shiver raced down his spine at the memory of his dream, but he kept walking. That could have meant anything. Even if it did seem oddly pertinent considering the whole issue with his family.

When Max realized he could hear his heart beating in his ears, he shook his head violently. No, he was _not_ dropping down that rabbit hole. Even if he couldn’t break the oppressive silence, he wasn’t _dependent_ on David _or_ Gwen for his mental stability. He didn’t need them! Easily, Max swept away his worr- his _thoughts_ and gave approximately zero fucks how the situation would turn out.

Any second now.

Soon he would find something to get angry about and it would just burn it all away.

Any… second… now…

“Fuck,” he said aloud, picking up his pace. “Can you try to walk faster than my grandmother without her cane or is the idea of actually moving along killing you all inside?”

No one took the bait.

Alright, it was clear that everyone was moving at a good clip and Max mentally conceded that it hadn’t been his best effort. Still, some token aggravation would be nice. A scowl. Or some rolled eyes. A reaction, for the love of god.

David was loping easily along with the group as Anita plunged forward, Gwen at her heels, and Max beside them, scowling. Fine, he wouldn’t start an argument _or_ a conversation.

He began counting steps to give his brain something better to do than circle, vulture-like, around his last bastion of logic and cynical rationality.

Finally, a voice broke the monotony. 

“Hello! You’re new!” The man that greeted them had an airy style of dress that clashed harshly with his severe, close-shaven hair and somehow threatening height. Max could see his wide hands were dirty and calloused as he waved them over towards the field he was working, “Looking for a place to stay or passing through?”

“We- well, we were hoping to find a place to winter,” David started with a nervous smile. At the tone, Max stared up at his horrifying, murderous pseudo-guardian with complete disgust. His expression screamed, _You’ve killed people twice as scary as Gentle Giant and you’re acting like a fucking wimp_.

Or that’s what David imagined it said and he was actually very close.

Similarly off-put at the change in demeanor, Anita’s mouth was slightly open before she pulled herself together with a professional cold. She extended a hand, “I’m Anita, and this is _my_ nephew, Max. The other two are… our friends, David and Gwen.”

“David’s my guardian,” Max put in with a sideways sneer to Anita. He wasn’t going to let her get away with setting the relationship status how she wanted it. Not when she could use it to separate him from David and drag him home. Or wherever his family had holed up to wait out the worst of the apocalypse. Max wouldn’t be surprised if they had an actual hidey hole somewhere like the elitist assholes they were.

“That is correct,” David added cheerily, having regained a spine from the direct attack. “Though, Anita is allowed to visit because she’s not directly part of the reason Max is with me. If we’re going to be blunt.”

The dark-haired man looked from David’s aggressive grin to Anita’s equally angry scowl and held his hands up defensively, “No need to explain your family to me. They might want the details at the town hall - we’re trying a census - but I’ll just lead you there and hoof it out of your way.”

When the adults involved looked suitably chagrined, he lowered his hands with a disarming smile that made the stern lines of his face transform into something far more gentle, “And I’m Don Nurfington, nice to meet you. Welcome to Standing.”

Gwen raised a finger questioningly, “Did you say Nurfington?”

“Have you met someone from my family before, then?” he asked in return, eyebrows raising and smile widening. “It’s not a common name, I know.”

The two ex-counselors exchanged a look, unsure how much of their criminal activity regarding Max had gone mainstream before the world’s end gave the communication systems a new star. Gwen shrugged and David figured they might as well chance it.

“We’re camp counselors- uh, I guess we _were_ counselors,” David corrected with a little laugh, anxiety plain in the iron set of his shoulders. “Either way, we were Nazario’s counselors while he was at camp this summer. Is he…?”

A large, friendly hand thumped into David’s tense back, Don’s eyes sparkling, “He’s my little cousin! Good to meet a new friend of the family! You know, he’s wool-gathering up at town hall right now. He calls it guarding, but nobody here would raise a hand against Dolph. He’s done so much for the town!”

 _Dolph_ , Gwen mouthed at David disbelievingly when Don turned to escort them up.

It was Max who asked the pertinent question, however.

“Yeah,” he drew out incredulously, “Isn’t Dolph like eight? And you’ve, what, elected him _mayor_ of the biggest human town we’ve seen in months?”

“No, no, he’s not mayor,” Don replied wryly, humor in the tilt of his lips. “He’s just the person who hashed out our treaty with the Elwetritschen. So he’s got an honorary seat on the council.”

“Huh,” David said neutrally, a default smile showing clearly how much he did not understand.

This, however, was too much for the poor snake. It emerged from Gwen’s collar, colors flashing vibrantly as it started a tirade without even a hint of context.

“Elwetritschen! Those chickens are not good neighbors! They can barely claim sentience! A treaty?” Derisively, it scoffed. “Do you truly believe those bird-brained halfbreeds could remember an entire _treaty_?” It hissed at nothing, curling in closer to Gwen’s neck, still roiling with color. “You’re all blessed with a fool’s luck if the bastards haven’t killed someone yet by mistake.”

Mouth turned downward, Don no longer looked quite so good-natured. His eyes were cool and his voice controlled. “They’re allies. I’ll show you up to town hall.”

“Good going,” Gwen muttered, shoving the snake back into her collar. “Only thing we needed was to piss off the locals.”

It hissed a half-hearted apology and settled grudgingly out of sight.

As they walked through town, there was a quiet buzz of activity around that had been missing in the past few months. Life a way they could recognize it. Children chasing each other around, or helping the adults. Crops being stored away. Stories traded and gossip shared. Clothing through the town varied wildly, as if people from all over the world had gotten it in their heads to vanish into the cold northern woods of the US just as modern society suffered a major blow. Of course, given the new and interesting quirks of the world's topography, it was just as probable that they had walked here over the course of a day.

Different colors and patterns of fabric were favored, but all the cuts had been adapted for the work in this climate. They all seemed to have taken well to the new situation. Everyone here looked a little worn, a little dirty, but happy enough. Content, anyway.

It was strange, how much things had stayed the same.

Max hated it, just a little.

Not that they could be happy, but… That humanity would just do it all again. Reinvent the wheel and go around the edges like they always had.

There were some things that had needed to change, he thought, chest feeling funny and tight as he couldn’t help but glance at Anita.

A few, insignificant things.

It wasn’t a particularly long walk from the edge of the settlement to their town hall. Still, the town was good sized, for the apocalypse. The chatter of civilization was prevalent once more. It was jarring after the near silence of the forest and the drone of insects in the grasslands.

The cellphone began to ring.

David pulled it from his bag and passed it to Max without hesitation. They all knew how the dang thing worked by now.

“You have a phone that works?” Don slowed his pace to speak with David, ignoring Gwen and her rude snake entirely. “How’d you pull that off?”

“It only works for children,” David explained with a shrug as Max moved away.

He would still follow the group, but he’d prefer a tiny bit of space for whoever was calling.

With only the slightest hint of annoyance, Max answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Ah, Max. I knew I could get you. How are you doing?” Harrison’s strange pauses filtered through the phone in a rush. “It’s Harrison, by the way.”

“I could tell.” There wasn’t anyone else Max knew who had Harrison’s nasal accent. Even Harrison’s parents, when they’d come to pick him up. It was an easy identifier.

Harrison’s reply was a little brighter at Max’s admission, though. For his part, Max rolled his eyes at the change in tone. It was just recognizing his voice over the phone. There was no need to be a sap about it. “Yes, alright. I was calling because I thought it would work and now it has. I’m not sure how they got separated from you, but I met your parents in this town without you and-”

“My parents?” Max interrupted with probably more urgency than he should have. “Where are you?” He caught David’s side eye from the front of the group and waved it off irritably. He could handle this.

“Uh… near Boston? Or what used to be Boston?” Harrison’s words came a bit more hesitantly at the sudden flare of anger. “Did you… Did they leave you, too?”

Before Max could argue that he had, in fact, left _them_ rather than the other way around, the word choice caught up with him. “Too? Did your parents leave you?”

“Ah, um, yes.” There was a long pause where Max couldn’t quite figure out what to say and Harrison must have been carefully planning his next sentence. “It was, uh, better for everybody since I still don’t know how to control all of my magic yet and the world is more dangerous than it was. Garden let me work with the farmers, so I- I’m not, you know, alone in the world or anything.”

“Garden’s the town you’re in?” Max checked, getting a short affirmative from Harrison. “Well, we’re in Standing - but don’t tell anybody. But if you…” He glanced up at David, who was very obviously keeping an ear on the conversation now. “If you want to tell them I’m fine that’s okay.”

He wished he could read David’s thoughts on that off his face, but the ex-counsellor’s _dealing with the public_ smile was firmly in place. After all, he was still maintaining some kind of conversation with Don that had the broader man beginning to thaw.

“I can do that,” Harrison agreed slowly. His words dropped like stones as he stated more than asked, “They didn’t leave you, did they? You ran.”

“I have my reasons-” Max started, but Harrison cut him off.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “It is like I said, sometimes it is better for everyone to separate from your parents.”

“...Alright, this conversation is getting weird,” Max decided. He wasn’t staying on _that_ topic if you paid him. A lightbulb pinged in his head as he realized exactly to whom he was talking and he added, “Hey, can I call you back later? Some weird stuff happened relating to, uh, camp.”

“I am guessing it is magical weird stuff that isn’t the usual magical weird stuff all over everything, also in part thanks to camp.”

“Exactly,” Max confirmed, not bothering to address how Harrison’s tone now seemed to contain a tangible sigh.

“I am sure you can call me later.” Harrison made a pensive noise, “But I have to get back to the harvest soon, so please wait until after sundown.”

At Max’s agreement, they exchanged awkward goodbyes and Max put Harrison’s number into the contacts under, “Magic Jerk 1.” Always nice to collect more numbers for the people who might actually know what’s going on when things go wrong.

They were approaching a larger building than the rest as Max looked up. It hunched among the rest of the lopsided stacks of rooms like a turkey among piles of pigeons. Just as the rest were, the black stone was held together with gently pulsating vines and the silvery substance they bled. The vines themselves were almost gray, leading the entire town to look nearly monochrome, if it weren’t for the people bustling about in full color within.

“Here we are,” Don announced. “Town Hall is the center of Standing and the first building to go up after the treaty. The Elwetritschen live beneath vines like these, but they trained them to hold stone for us, since we can’t vanish into the in between like they can.” He gave a fond chuckle. “Right kind of them - once they grasped the problem, anyway.”

“Very kind,” Anita echoed with a smile. “I would be honored to meet our benefactors later, if that is allowed.”

“They’ll be pleased as punch to meet another citizen of Standing,” Don assured her as they walked through the heavy doors of the hall. Rather than wood, they appeared to be made of coils upon coils of hardened vines, still faintly pulsing and connected to the ones in the walls on flexible “hinges” of knotted vine. Max didn’t really see the logic in making a door out of vines they weren’t supposed to harm in any way. Anything people had to interact with on a regular basis had the potential to get damaged.

“No, Nurf, you cannot join the town guard,” said a firm voice from beyond the antechamber they had just entered. “Not until you’re an adult.”

Peering through the archway into the main room of the building revealed a council of ten sitting behind a long, curved table that had been haphazardly constructed out of wood. There were pews of similar quality populating the center of the room, clearly to allow the town to sit in on meetings. Off to the right, a smaller desk with two chairs was covered in bright colors. It stood out like a sore thumb with the abstract murals covering its every surface. Not to mention the two children sitting behind it. Dolph had his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration as he painted over a portion of his desk in an entirely new set of images. Beside him, Nurf had his arms crossed over his chest as he exchanged glares with the woman sitting dead center on the council.

When he caught sight of Max, David and Gwen, however, he lit up and waved.

“Hey Uncle Don, hey guys, welcome to Standing!” He not-so-subtly elbowed Dolph, who looked up with a distracted air before giving them a sweet smile and returning to his painting. There was an air of resigned boredom weighing down the young boy’s shoulders, despite engaging in his favorite activity.

“Welcome to Standing,” the woman repeated. She was built like a fighter, one who could give David a run for his money. Her hair was tightly pulled back from her face in dreads and collected in a no nonsense ponytail. If it weren’t for the crop top proclaiming her “bae material” she would have seemed a very stern authority figure. She smiled, “I’m the mayor, but you can just call me Bonquisha.”

Don efficiently ran through their introductions, and most of the other council members were just as battle-hardened as their mayor. They all had small scars and warriors’ postures. One woman even had a thick line of scar tissue that ran up the side of her face from her jaw, vanishing under her hijab at the forehead, which looked like someone had made a good attempt at slicing her head up like salami. It even made David wince in sympathetic pain at the sight of it.

Despite their battle-worn appearance, however, they all seemed to be relatively at ease, even with newcomers in town. That was a hopeful sign.

“Thanks to the Elwetritschen, space isn’t an issue, so if any of you want to live separately, now is the time to ask.” The stout man at Bonquisha’s left pushed his glasses up his nose as he spoke and rifled through a stack of worn notebooks before he found what he was looking for with a quiet noise of triumph. Opening it to a certain page, he shoved a pen into the binding and hopped over the table. He’d been introduced as as Yuu Tanaka, but Bonquisha had interrupted and corrected it to “Killer.” Killer had given no protest and Don had repeated the introduction without fanfare, so that was evidently his preferred moniker. Or one he’d respond to, anyway.

He waved them to follow him as he walked past, standing only chin high to David but exuding an air of authority despite that. “I also keep track of the census, so we may as well let the meeting continue without us if you’re going to be staying, as Don implied.” Don nodded at that, but didn’t follow the group to add any more, splitting off for his nephew, instead. Looked like his job here was done.

“Max and I will live separately,” Anita hastily put in once they entered the hall and Don was out of earshot.

“Yeah,” Max agreed easily. He sent her an eerily innocent smile before he continued, “Separate from each other. Since I’ll be living with my guardian.”

David’s too wide smile made her close her mouth with a snap, though the fire in her eyes only burned brighter. She crossed her arms over her chest, turning her head away.

Killer was outwardly unfazed by this byplay. Mostly, anyway. His calculating gaze swept over the group once more before they reached the smaller side chamber he’d been aiming for. “I need full names and relation to one another for the census, as well as a bit of demographic information, if you don’t mind.”

He sat at one of the many small tables scattered throughout the room and gestured for them to join him.

“I don’t have the patience to hand-write forms, so I’ll just be collecting the information through interview, but I assure you that you may look over your own entry for accuracy when the interview is complete. I’ll also be interviewing Max in a different room - standard practice for incoming groups.”

His tone was casual and his words practiced, as if he’d said the same thing a hundred times before. It was only this nonchalance that kept David from sending a worried glance Max’s way. Besides, Max was a smart kid. Whatever Killer was used to doing to pry information out of kids probably wouldn’t get too far with Max.

But he was still a kid.

No, it would be fine. However it turned out. After all, David always had other options.

They ran through the adults quickly, though David was surprised to learn Anita was only twenty years old. It… explained a little of her ignorance of Max’s situation, even if it didn’t excuse it. When it came to Gwen’s information, however, things took a turn.

“Gwendolyn Turner?” Killer repeated, looking up and setting aside his glasses. “Not Louis Turner’s ‘Gwenster?’”

“Oh god,” Gwen dropped her face into her hands. Without looking up, she asked plaintively, “He’s here?”

With a solemn nod, Killer patted her shoulder, “He was on tour with Missy and she… unfortunately passed when the Event happened. He can’t bear to leave her grave. Your mother-”

“ _She’s_ here?” Gwen groaned before whipping her head up with narrowed eyes. “Wait, who’s Missy?”

“His dog.”

The tension ran out of Gwen’s shoulders for a moment before returning with enough oomph to send them up to her ears. “I’m living with David and Max. Because we’ve bonded, from all the fighting for our lives together. I couldn’t possibly leave them now to move back in with my parents. Sadly.”

“I’m sure they will be thrilled just to know you are in town,” Killer retrieved his hand and settled his glasses back on his nose. “You’re twenty five, yes?”

Max grinned and Gwen shut her eyes tightly for a moment to brace herself. He leaned in, “You’re older than David and you had the same job? Wow, we are going to talk about your life choices later.”

“So much bonding,” Gwen reiterated, patting Max’s head with maybe a little more force than necessary. “And I’m _five months_ older than David, so it’s barely anything.”

“I’m not sure it matters…?” David ventured, but Gwen’s miserable silence shut him up. The interview continued without interruption from there. Once the questions were done, Killer took a moment to scribble a few notes at the bottom of the page and they waited expectantly for whatever was next.

Seeing a break in the conversation, Anita slid into place, “You know, as Max’s aunt, I’d be perfectly willing to sit with him during his interview, if you think he needs moral support.”

Any trace of enjoyment boiling away, Max turned a glare on Anita and shot back, “No _thanks_.”

“I think he’ll be fine,” Killer agreed, double-checking what he’d written for the rest of the group and standing. “But we may as well start that now. Feel free to explore town hall. Of course, you’re not confined here, but it would make it easier for me to find you and get you set up if you would wait _in_ the building.”

“It’s not like we’d just leave Max,” Gwen snorted. The fond look from David and the weird one from Max made her back pedal, “Because he’s a magnet for trouble.”

David’s watery eyes did not get drier and Gwen began to panic.

Max, the little shit, abandoned her with a shrug.

It didn’t take long after that before Gwen was wrapped up in a bear hug and being lightly cried on, despite her protests. She was going to get Max back for this.

“I’m just so glad you’re so close now,” David was saying as she grudgingly patted his back. Her feet were off the ground, so she didn’t really have the leverage to get away. She’d have to ask David to cover this kind of situation the next time they had a lesson. Even if she was planning to use it against him, Gwen knew he wouldn’t refuse.

With that thought in mind, she sighed and gave up on correcting him, “Yeah, whatever.”

.

Max, on the other hand, was starting to regret not asking for at least David to come with him. He still didn’t want Anita, but Killer was leading him down a set of stairs into a gloomy basement of black stone. It was exactly the kind of place a serial killer would slaughter his victims.

Okay, maybe he would have taken even Anita in this situation.

Just as he was contemplating sprinting back up the stairs shouting for David, Killer pressed a stone into the wall. Lights dotted on, one by one, along vines embedded in the ceiling. A silvery glow gently illuminated a pretty normal, if old-fashioned, kitchen. There was a fireplace and an old cast-iron oven along with a modern refrigerator that had vines infiltrating its nooks and crannies. If the lights above them were any indication, the vines clearly had powers beyond holding things together. Probably they were keeping the fridge cold, too.

There wasn’t any direct evidence of that yet, but Max had learned to overestimate threats rather than potentially underestimate them in their months in the wilds.

Considering the signs everywhere saying not to harm the vines, Max had placed them firmly in the threat category before they even made it to town.

“Come sit down.” Killer was heading for the cabinets growing out of the wall, but the stone island in the center of the kitchen was the only place with seating. It was clear where he meant. Max hopped up on a stool and interlocked his fingers, bouncing the joined hands lightly against the black counter-top as he waited. The man’s tone was still business-like, but the edges were soft. He probably wasn’t going to murder Max down here.

Probably.

“So… do you interview kids separately in case they were just picked up on the side of the road or their family was murdered by the group that came in and they were taken as some kind of sick trophy or something?” Max stilled his hands, spreading his fingers across the cool surface instead. He could never sit still when he was in these situations. “Or are you just a creep?”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?” Killer asked in return, rather than answer the questions. He set down two empty glasses and turned to the fridge. His tone was just as casual as it had been upstairs. “Or do you just have an active imagination? Apple juice or milk?”

“Milk and I'm not an idiot,” Max answered immediately. “Where the hell did you get apple juice, though?” They had passed cows on the way in, but there was no good reason to waste apples making juice unless they had a thriving orchard and too few people to worry about. With all the people they’d seen in town, preserves would be smarter - oh god, David’s survival lessons were actually getting to him.

Pouring one glass of milk and another of apple juice, Killer explained, “The Elwetritschen’s vines can produce pretty much anything they’ve been fed.”

“And you just trust that it’s safe for humans to drink.” Max accepted the glass and eyed his milk. “Is this from the vines or a cow?”

“A cow,” Killer replied with a little smile, walking around the counter to sit beside him. “But we do have scientists in town who have done their best to make sure we’re safe.”

“Uh huh,” Max agreed skeptically. He set his glass down without drinking from it, even as Killer sipped at his juice.

Unruffled by his audience’s doubt, Killer took another sip of juice and flipped through his notebook one-handed to an empty page, “Let’s get started, shall we? Full name?”

“Max Thakur; it’s not short for anything.” He’d been asked that enough times by teachers and other kids that he tagged it onto the end of nearly every formal introduction. Nikki believed otherwise and constantly barraged him with guesses as to his full name whenever nicknames came up. Back at camp, anyway. Max ignored the twinge in his chest at the reminder that Nikki and Neil were back with their parents now, somewhere he might never see them again.

They wouldn’t have seen each other again even if the world hadn’t ended. It’s not like kids actually keep in touch with camp friends.

Except Harrison, he supposed. But that was different.

“Age?”

“I’m ten and a half.” His birthday was actually coming up soon, so almost eleven might have been more honest, but Max knew birth date was going to be the next question anyway. “December 26,” he added, unprompted.

When Killer didn’t make a comment about Christmas, Max grudgingly allowed the man to rise slightly in his estimation. The questions continued in that vein for a while until they got to relations. Max had just listened to this series of questions three times in a row with the adults, so he knew what was next when Killer paused.

His tone was leading, as if Killer were trying to line a path for Max with pillows, “I would like you to be honest with me, Max. If you’re scared for your safety, I can promise that the council will protect you. Will you tell me the truth?”

“...Yeah,” Max said in a small voice. He didn’t know how he was supposed to act in this situation, exactly, but he figured reluctant might be how to start if he wanted to play this his way. He let his palms lay face up as he twiddled with his fingers. He’d read somewhere that open palms signaled honesty and he would take all the help he could get.

Killer closed his notebook, “Is Mr. Adelard really your guardian?”

“Yes,” Max nodded firmly.

“Were you removed from your family by a court of law?” he pressed. “Did you ever meet with any police or a judge?”

“Yeah, they were really nice.” Jesus, Killer really was covering his bases. Those questions were probably to make sure Max hadn’t been tricked into thinking David was his guardian. “They got me away from my family, but now my aunt wants me to talk to them again. She thinks they’ve changed, but…” Max turned his face away, intentionally pulling his shoulders in. “I- I don’t know. They weren’t… good to me before.”

Man, he was really proud of that hitch. That was quality acting, right there.

“I see,” Killer tapped his notebook lightly with one finger, likely not even aware he was doing it. “So Anita Thakur is really your aunt?”

“Yes, but she wasn’t part of the case,” Max explained. “We never lived together.”

“And how did you meet Mr. Adelard? I’m sure you knew each other before the judge awarded him custody.” Killer looked mildly interested, and Max wasn’t sure he trusted the expression. He didn’t know how a case like that would usually go, but didn’t the kid end up in foster care most of the time? Or with a relative or something? He’d had his own plans that had never meant to land him anywhere near a foster family, so he hadn’t really researched that side of things.

Oh well, he’d just have to fill David in on their backstory later. Gwen, too. Maybe Anita, if David could keep up the intimidation.

“He’s my godfather. He works at a summer camp and convinced my family to send me there this summer so he could figure out if… if they were doing something bad. Then he filed for custody.”

A nod from Killer, “Thank you for trusting me, Max.”

Max looked down at his shoes and mumbled something about welcome. He glanced up through his eyelashes and shot the man a shy smile.

Killer smiled back, “Let’s get you back to upstairs then.”

Max hopped from the stool, eager to leave, and didn’t notice how Killer’s gaze lingered on the untouched glass he left behind. The stout man emptied it in the sink without comment, leaving both on the counter as he led them back the way they had come.

.

“Gwen, shouldn’t we visit your parents?”

It hadn’t taken long for that question to come up once Killer had gotten them set up in dwellings with admirable efficiency. The three of them were two stories up, balanced haphazardly atop a collection of other houses that were stacked together like building blocks. While each stone hut appeared a bit smaller than the average studio apartment from the outside, somehow they managed to squeeze five rooms into the one Gwen would be sharing with David and Max. Gwen was pacing the boundary of the living room/kitchen and muttering measurements to herself when David had asked exactly what she’d known he’d ask.

“Yeah,” she began with a sharp edge to the tone, “I’m really looking forward to ruining their day by telling them I’m not going to live with them, even if I’m in the same town.” She made a gesture that encompassed Max, who was carefully inspecting the vines growing into their beat up fridge, and David, still unmoving from his perch on the back of the worn sofa. “I don’t even want to try to explain why my alternative is some man I’m not dating and a kid that’s not his.”

David frowned slightly at the description but shook it off in no time. “Wouldn’t they want to know you’re safe, though?”

She shot him a baleful glare that only got a toothy smile in response.

Gwen deflated.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “Goddammit. But you’re going with me.”

“I-” Max tried to protest but she cut him off with an evil glint in her eye.

“You don’t have to come along,” she assured him with a cloying sweetness. Max did not relax. He didn’t like that tone. “They have a school here. And while you were getting interviewed, we signed you up with Sarah. She’s the councilwoman in charge of education and now she knows your face. She made sure they’ll be expecting you.”

Wide-eyed with betrayal, Max threw himself back on the couch with a groan. “That was the best part of the apocalypse, Gwen! You’ve ruined it!”

Gwen sat beside David on the back of the couch, informing him with mock solemnity, “Did you hear that, David? I ruined the apocalypse.”

“Technically, _we_ ruined the apocalypse, since I’m the one who had to sign everything,” David said, patting her hand reassuringly.

“Ugh,” Max summarized from below. “And we don’t even have TV.”

“There’s Azira on the radio,” David pointed out and Max made a pained noise.

Shaking her head, Gwen stood, “I’m with the kid on this one.” She rolled up her sleeves. “They did give us rations for the week though and this place is set up like someone was already living here. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. So let’s cook an actual meal instead of argue the merits of daytime talk shows.”

They didn’t have to coerce Max into helping. He was used to it on the road, but now there was a pretty solid reward on the other side of this one. Real food. Not just whatever they could scrounge or find.

As he painstakingly peeled a carrot under David’s watchful eye, Gwen made some wry joke that made David snort and Max smirk. Even the snake cautiously emerged into the open and began exploring the room, edging around the corner the platypus had waddled out of Gwen's bag and claimed as their own. The conversation bubbled back into being, but it was light. Not weighed down by the worry and stress of the wilds. They still had things to worry about, but by unspoken agreement, they put them aside for the night.

David smiled and hummed some old person song under his breath while he was working, until Gwen started humming along. Pretty soon they were both singing, and it was ridiculously lame, but Max didn’t interrupt to point it out.

They knew already, anyway.

Max handed Gwen his finished bowl of carrots and smiled.


	5. In Between

"Hi Max," Harrison greeted groggily. Max had waited to call until he was in his own room and the adults were probably asleep. So it was a bit late. Later for Harrison, given time zones.

It wasn't that he didn't trust them, but more that… Well, Max had a couple questions for Harrison outside the whole magic problem.

"Hey," he greeted in a tense whisper. "Um, sorry to wake you up."

"It is alright," Harrison mumbled immediately. More of an automatic response than an actual thought. Either way it moved the conversation along. "What did you need help with?"

Oh, Max didn't like that wording. Ok, so, he guessed he was kind of asking for help. But he could probably figure it out on his own!

...Just, this was faster. The smart choice.

"Yeah, I heard David talking about the Kronics and his voice did this time-bendy thing when he said their catchphrase." Max cleared his throat and let go of something in his chest, "Ba̕s̴ic҉a̧l͡ly, ͞it͢ ͝s͜ou̧n̕d̢ed͘ ͏l̛iķe̴ th̨is͝.͟"

"Holy _shit_ _._ Max."

"It's pretty fucking weird but I think it's just from standing right on top of the seal when it half broke…?" His voice trailed off leadingly, an undercurrent of hope swimming in the words that he would not acknowledge. Confirmation would be a neat little bow on top of Max’s pretty rock solid theory. They could put the whole thing behind them forever.

"I… maybe for David, yes. He was living on the seal for many summers. But, um…" Harrison sounded more awake now. Still the words weren't coming any faster. Hopefully, that wasn’t a bad sign. "Max, I heard the Kronics very briefly when the seal was… mostly fixed. You are- um, Max, can you just repeat this exactly as I say it? Discombobulate."

"Why?" Max raised an eyebrow. "Is this gonna curse me through the phone?"

The reply was hasty, but earnest, "No, I am just trying to show you something!"

Well, what could possibly go wrong? The faster he got this done, the faster Harrison might explain what he was thinking.

"Discombobulate." Max slapped a hand over his mouth as the nasal tone registered. That had been Harrison's voice! His cadence and- and- what did that even mean?

"See, you heard me say that directly, so it's a perfect mimicry," Harrison was saying as Max’s mind ripped through the puzzle pieces he had at breakneck pace. "With the Kronics, you're only half there because they probably never said those words to you. Once I heard you speaking like that, I could tell it was some kind of mimicry, not your own ability to uh… twist time, I guess. Because, you know, it wasn't _right._ "

"Oh," said Max, thoughts spinning out of orbit into sheer possibility.

Harrison elaborated, unprompted and unfazed, "You might have gotten _that_ from being on top of the seal when it blew. There are lots of stories about mimics, but not so many about the Kronics."

"Uh huh," Max rubbed a hand over his throat, only half listening as Harrison, encouraged, rambled on for a while about sympathetic magic or whatever. The gist of it was that David and he were probably not about to explode into released Kronics any time soon. He'd wanted to ask Harrison about that other thing he’d mentioned, but with this ability, he had options.

"Hey, Harrison, really great information in your whole magic rant here, but it's getting pretty late."

His voice felt far away, like someone else was speaking.

Harrison's tone dipped into chagrin, "Oh, uh, right. I get a little bit carried away sometimes. I should- I should go to sleep, too."

"Thanks, Harrison. Bye." Max barely waited for the other boy's farewell before he hung up the phone. He pulled up the keypad and stared at the glowing numbers for a long moment. When he finally put in a number he knew by heart - even if it rarely picked up - there was a fine tremble in his fingers. He would just see if… see what they were up to. That’s all.

The line connected, a phone ringing on the other side as Max held the cell to his ear with both hands, as if cradling a seashell to hear the ocean.

"Hello?" His father's voice sounded clear over the line. "Did you find another phone, Anita?"

Max swallowed hard and cleared his throat, "Yes. It was a tad difficult with that obsessed counselor breathing down my neck." His aunt's voice flowed easily from his own lips. He'd listened to her talk so often when he was a little kid. He hadn't expected his father to jump straight to Anita being able to call him, but it was what Max had been planning to convince him to believe in the first place.

"You found them, then? Did you retrieve Max?"

"I have found them but as of yet, I cannot safely separate Max from his abductors," Max replied as coolly as he could with his heart flinging itself into his throat. "Has anything changed?"

"No. Bring him home as soon as you can get him away from that monster." His father paused and added, "Where are you, anyway? Perhaps we can send help."

"I'm a few weeks south of Garden," Max invented. "They're trying to get somewhere warm for the winter months." That was plausible, right? Given that Anita must have traveled at least a few weeks to get near Standing.

There was a beat of silence, "I see."

"I'm… not sure Max is worth all this effort," he put forward hesitantly, the words dragging barbed wire up from his chest that jangled fearfully in his throat as he spoke them. "He doesn't seem to want to come home."

"It doesn't matter what he thinks he wants. He's been deluded by a monster barely clinging to a shell of human appearance- maybe the first to drag itself back into our reality." His father's voice was strangely smug. It didn't really match the concern Max would expect from literally anyone else saying that sentence. David would have been practically crying. Or growling. He was lost in a familiar bitter space between thoughts for a moment that had never really gone away, so he nearly missed it when his father continued. "You'd really be better off coming back to us. Max."

Max hung up so fast he barely even realized what he was doing. He blocked the number with shaking hands, dropping the phone to the bedspread. Screen dark and mocking, it lay there in threatening silence. He pulled his knees in close to his chest, away from the mobile.

“Fucking hell," he whispered in his own voice. "How the fuck did he know?"

.

Max was woken from an uneasy rest by a loud knock. It wasn't at his bedroom door, but it was nearby, all the same.

His palms went cold a moment, visions of his father standing impassive and unyielding at the front door screaming through his mind. A deep breath and Max reminded himself that his father didn't know where he was and was across the country, besides.

It's not like he could hop into an airplane anymore.

Outside, Max could hear David talking indistinctly with someone and Gwen making the inhuman grunts of her early morning wake up routine. With Gwen out of commission, Max wasn't sure David should be on his own with some random stranger.

Reluctantly, he put on his last change of clean clothes and opened the door.

Bustling around making breakfast, David seemed fine. At the table, Gwen was slumped over a cup of something- probably tea or coffee from the vines, Max thought with a shudder - and three visitors sat beside her. Dolph bounced slightly with enthusiasm as he greeted Max, Nurf looming at his side. And with them was Killer.

"Good morning, Max. We were just talking about Camp Campbell," he said with a smile that didn't feel quite right.

"Why didn't you tell us David was your godfather?" Dolph asked, eyes wide. "I thought we had almost become friends when camp ended."

"Look at him," Max pointed up at David, who had just burned his finger on a pan handle and was shaking it out with light tears tracking down his cheeks. "He's lame and he would have just embarrassed me the whole time."

Gwen snorted into her liquid caffeine, "He kind of _did_ embarrass you the whole time."

"When?" David demanded, still watery eyed, but putting food on the table anyway.

Counting off on his fingers, Max started to list, "Camp songs obviously aimed at me, picking me up to put me places, crying if I even pretended to be nice-"

"That time he carried you around with him all day after you got tangled up with the Wood Scouts," Nurf put in helpfully. Right, Max had forgotten that. Although he had been pretty shaken up after the kidnapping and… Well, it _was_ embarrassing, he guessed. Though it had kind of given him time to get his shit together and at least he’d known he wasn’t about to get retaken by the Wood Scouts.

"And David, kids don't want to be tucked in at ten years old," Gwen added, giving David a look that said she'd said this before. That one was… true, too. Max wasn’t a little kid. He didn’t _need_ anyone to tuck him in. No one had when he was a little kid, anyway. Having someone do it now was… different.

Dolph nodded, "I can see it now. Plus he would worry over nothing and make you look weak." Yep, that was uh… That was a thing that happened. Word choice there left a bit to be desired, but Max couldn’t say it was _un_ true.

He had grown quiet as the others took over his list. Disregarding a lift of the lip at Dolph's uniquely weird wording, he had stopped reacting outwardly to the reminders. Instead, he was knitting his fingers together at the table, ignoring his empty plate as the others dug in and the conversation moved on to the school. Some of those hadn’t been… bad. But they were right. They were still embarrassing.

When David went ahead and just put food on his plate, he didn't protest. He ate what he had in an ominous quiet.

For his part, David was a little worried about that blank expression. After all, they might be safe here, but that could mean Max started intentionally causing chaos again. He’d have to see if he could talk to any parents here about how they helped their kids settle in. That might give him a starting place, at least.

When it was time to head to the schoolhouse, Killer stayed apart.

"I simply showed Dolph and Nurf the way to your home because they wanted to walk to school with you," he explained without prompting, smiling down at Max. "I won't force you all to have an escort to school."

"I… guess they can walk on their own," David conceded slowly, having been forcefully confronted with his own uncoolness minutes before. Embarrassing Max _again_ his first day of school would not be a great way to start off Operation: Settling In.

Placatingly, Gwen patted his side, the highest she could reach without moving. She didn't relinquish her grip on her cup. Despite this lethargy, it was clear she was beginning to wake up. Her eyes were nearly focusing on the people around her without the lines of a glare settling in between her brows.

"I'd love to help the two of you find where you'd like to work," Killer added leadingly as the kids walked out the door.

David smiled, focusing on the idea of occupying himself to keep it even. "Oh, of course. Where do you need people most?" Gwen eyed his expression consideringly.

"Well, the guard always needs recruits, but don't feel pressured- we could use more hands in plenty of places." They continued to exchange smiles Gwen didn't believe for a second.

Oh god, there were two of them.

She could understand the hostility. After all, even half asleep she wasn't oblivious. Killer was picking at the frayed edges of Max's story and finding loose ends.

Mournfully she clutched her sweet, sweet wake up juice closer. The time to enjoy it might be temporary.

"You should really join the guard," Gwen finally put in as the two men circled topics like sharks in what should have been an easy exchange of information. "Patrolling the outskirts is… very important. Hell, I could join the guard, too. I think I'm used to fighting for my life by now."

For what might have been the first time, Gwen got to see a genuine reaction cross Killer's face. She didn't know what it meant but, boom. That involuntary pause and sucked in lip was a win for Gwen.

He got himself under control in a blink, "We won't just throw people out there; there is some basic combat training from our resident ex-military first."

"You're very organized," Gwen praised, standing now that her cup was empty and ushering Killer toward the door. He went, half bemused and half annoyed. Or so Gwen guessed by the tick of his jaw. "Why don't you tell us where we'll need to go for training and who we need to talk to? David and I will head straight there."

Lingering on the threshold with Gwen's blithely expectant smile blocking his way back in, Killer let out a small huff that might have been a laugh in another life.

"Alright," he held his hands up in surrender. "Head to the armory in the northeast and talk to Marna before noon. She's in town for today and she’ll set you up. It's clearly labeled; I expect you'll have very little trouble finding it."

"Thank you," Gwen concluded politely before less politely closing the door in Killer's face.

David was grinning at her when she turned, "You always impress me."

Immediately, she struck a tough pose and they both descended into nervous giggles.

There was a Killer on their tail, after all.

.

"So this is basically Camp Campbell all over again," Max concluded flatly as he stood a distance from the small crowd of students around their three teachers. Hector, Sarah, and Carol were lecturing on woodland navigation. 

The deja vu was strong even if they didn’t look anything like David and Gwen. Both of the camp counselors were long-limbed and lanky. Carol was tall, but thin as a wisp with bright blond hair. Sarah was built low to the ground, with loose-fitting clothes that obscured much of her build and a hijab colored similarly to blend into the forest. Lastly, Hector was round and friendly-looking in a way David couldn’t quite pull off.

Dolph shrugged, "It is very similar, but the subjects are all focused on useful things to know now that magic is everywhere."

"And math," Nurf contributed with an irritated expression.

"And math," Dolph conceded.

It was true that there was new information in their spiel, probably gleaned from Azira's many broadcasts or painfully learned from experience. Given that Sarah was the woman with the massive scar down the side of her face, Max would lean toward experience for most of it.

He'd rather not speculate what that experience had been when he'd had a variety of angry creatures' sharp teeth and sharp other things very close to his own face on multiple occasions. He grasped for a change of subject.

"I guess we’ll actually go into the schoolhouse for math," Max guessed, looking up at the hulking mass of black stone and vines.

"Yes, when the weather is bad, we do our indoor classes, but I'd prefer that you pay attention to the here and now." He turned to find Sarah was looming over him, hands on her hips. Her voice held a hint of wry humor but her stance proved she wasn't going to take any cheek. "I'd hate for you to find yourself needing this information one day and come up empty."

"Trust me, lady," Max looked up at her long-sufferingly, hands in his pockets. "I've heard this all before."

Her smile tilted, and she gave him a thumbs up, "Sounds like we have a volunteer for our first practical of the day!"

The other teachers reacted immediately. Being a short mountain of a man, Hector's laugh was booming as Sarah extended an arm toward the front of the group.

Walking warily ahead, Max refused to be intimidated, shoving his hands in his pockets and standing up straight. "So what, you're going to blindfold me and throw me into the woods or something?"

"Not quite," Carol smiled apologetically. She was tall and willowy, but moved like she was twice her size, arms tucked in close and wide eyes watchful. "We don't plan to put children in danger, after all."

"Then how is it a practical-" Max was going to ask before the world dissolved into a flurry of disturbing colors. He fell to his knees from the sheer vertigo, clutching the dirt with both hands. "What fresh fucking hell is this!"

Carol's voice echoed through the colors as they resolved into a forest clearing similar to the area around Standing, "This is my in-between."

"Carol's particularly adept with illusion," Sarah's voice added, equally omnipresent. "Didn't notice the feathers, I suppose?"

...Her hair had looked too yellow, but Max hadn't thought he needed to take note of his new teachers' fashion choices.

Dammit, how did he always end up in these situations?

"What am I even supposed to be doing here?" He complained, waving an arm to encompass the empty clearing. "Setting up camp for the rest of my life in this shitty illusion?"

“Find your way home,” Carol informed him airily, unconcerned with his hostility. “This _is_ a woodlands navigation practical.”

True. Max couldn’t help but point out, “If I actually got lost in the woods, I would have at least gone out myself and seen some of the stuff near the town beforehand. Or, you know, told my… guardian where I was going. And I’d know how long I’d been walking and shit.”

There was no response. Assuming the test had begun, Max grudgingly poked around the forest clearing. Same weird mix of trees as surrounded the town. Same bird calls.

Max paused, looking up into the trees.

How the hell had he noticed the bird calls? David, of course, had tried to get everybody interested in bird watching back at camp but Max had slept through that.

Maybe it was like that dream he’d had, where the landscape had seemed to shove itself into his foremost thoughts. Like the world was trying to shield itself from real scrutiny with useless trivia. He listened carefully. The calls were the same, but he didn’t know what birds they were. His recognition was limited to remembering the sounds from his trek into Standing. That meant it was probably his own memory and not some mystical mind whammy from the environment.

Fine. Max would figure out why he could remember this kind of nonsense later.

He did notice as he examined the area that the birdsong was essentially ‘on repeat.’ Skips and dips in the sound were artfully arranged to resemble randomness. Unfortunately for Carol, the calls themselves were identical to one another, giving the game away no matter how carefully the timings were planned.

That didn’t help him get out. Or back to the fake ‘Standing.’ It did give him a warm little shock of petty vindication, though.

He could just stand there and do nothing. It wasn’t like he had anything to prove.

But… clearly Sarah didn't believe him. She probably thought he’d give up any second now. Or stumble into the woods in a random direction and get fake-murdered. Or cry.

Max scowled.

Looking up, the sun was blocked by a solid canopy. Not that he knew what direction he’d been ‘taken’ in when they made this scenario, anyway. It might help him if he needed to backtrack, though. Low branches were in scarce supply, so he’d have to keep it in mind for later. He could hear birdsong… and, very faintly, water.

That was where he needed to go. He could still remember David telling him how people tended to settle along waterways. If he could hear it, it was probably a river - or at least a big lake. It could be a small, loud creek, too, but he’d cross that bridge if he came to it.

Max jimmied his socks up out of his sort of stolen boots and over the hem of his pants before he set out as a matter of habit. David had fretted over he and Gwen getting some magical tick disease often enough that he barely noticed himself doing it.

Pointedly, he pulled out the pocketknife Gwen and David had _very_ hesitantly given him and gouged several trees along the way. In case he needed to find his way back. Because he _did_ sort of know what he was doing. The greener, thicker plants around him and occasional swarm of gnats only confirmed it. He was definitely heading towards water.

Which also meant - if Carol was any good at this - that he was also heading towards an area with heavy magical creature traffic. Even hobgoblins needed to drink water, apparently.

Hopefully, Carol’s illusions wouldn’t share the real ones’ tendency to target Max no matter how docile they’d been before seeing him.

A few fairy rings blocked a direct path to the water, but Max circumvented them easily. Soon enough he found himself on the bank of a narrow river. No gold stained the water, no movement alerted him to uninvited company, and he figured he’d finally had a spot of good luck. True-sized trees shaded the river and kept the air cool as he followed the flow downstream.

A few brightly colored sprites flitted by over the surface of the water, uncharacteristically ignoring him. They swirled around each other, casting a gentle glow and otherwise behaving as Gwen swore they did whenever he wasn’t nearby.

Guess she wasn’t just lying to make fun of him.

Mixed feelings churned like indigestion as Max wrinkled his nose and looked away.

He couldn’t be sure whether he’d been deposited up or down the river from Standing, but he’d probably do better heading downstream. David said rivers tended to flow into other rivers and eventually into large bodies like the sea - while if he headed upstream, he’d end up trekking through foothills and up into the mountains.

At least, if topography still functioned the way it did before the world changed.

So far, it seemed mildly consistent with that rule; Max wasn’t super worried.

It wasn’t real, anyway.

Trudging along the stream, he mused that Gwen and David were probably getting into more excitement than he was. They were supposed to visit Gwen’s parents today. Before the whole classes thing, he hadn’t wanted to go, but… Now that he had _ample_ time to think on this long fucking hike, Gwen bringing David _and a kid_ to see her parents would have been instant drama. 

Max stabbed a tree, marking it more viciously than he had thus far as he continued on his course.

He should’ve skipped school.

.

Gwen almost wished Max had skipped school. Or that she’d signed him up in a day or so.

Heckling and sarcasm might not be her usual idea of a savior, but it might have cut the tension a little. And he’d be able to vouch for her, if she bribed him. Maybe then her parents would quit _insisting_ -

“You really don’t have to be ashamed of dating a white man,” her mother, Sonia, repeated soothingly. She pushed more of her escaped salt and pepper hair under her headband, fixing Gwen with an amused smile, “Right now, there aren’t a lot of humans left.”

“I’m not ashamed because we’re _not_ dating,” Gwen shot back again. Why wouldn’t they believe her? Oh right, _David_.

Her father had taken David aside for a man to man talk that David had misinterpreted. With all the guilelessness of a duck, he’d easily admitted that he loved Gwen and wanted her to be happy before it had sunk in that Louis had meant an entirely different kind of love.

Now he was red from toe to tip and stammering uselessly.

The damage had been done.

Gwen just needed to patch it over somehow.

They were currently trapped at her father’s cozy kitchen table, walled in on all sides with domesticity. Posters from his tour bus were proudly displayed on the walls, in between where Sonia had reinforced certain “weaknesses” like windows. A few potted herbs mingled cheerily with the omnipresent city vines. Old pictures of Gwen and of Louis’ dog sat prominently on the shelves along with her mother’s impressive toolkit and various bladed weapons.

“Alright, I can see it’s a touchy subject.” Sonia softly smiled at David, as if apologizing for her daughter’s denials. Over before he could address it, the weird moment was shuffled to the side in favor of a brusque practicality, “Now that the world has _actually_ ended, Gwendolyn, have you considered finally learning some self defense?”

Gwen leaned heavily against the back of her chair, turning her head and crossing her arms over her chest, “You did _not_ predict the world ending in an explosion of magic across the planet.”

“I knew we’d need to be prepared for anything,” Sonia retorted primly, putting a hand over Louis’ on the table and squeezing. “We helped found Standing, you know. A lot of people here are _grateful_ I’m… what was it? Paranoid and unrealistic?”

“Mama, I just came here to let you know I was alive,” Gwen stood from the table irritably. “And I’ve done that, so I’m going now. David and I need to report in.”

“You’ve got jobs already! That’s my Gwennie,” Louis stood, following suit with a nervous upbeat attitude as he tried to smooth things over. He walked with them to the door, David having been yanked up as Gwen passed by. “So responsible. You joining the crafters? I always thought you’d do great in a creative field. It’ll do you good to loosen up. Maybe the farmers, even! You’re good at planning-”

“We’re joining the guard,” Gwen informed him sharply at the door. Not waiting for a reply, she pulled David from the house and shut the door, stalking down the steps past the units stacked beneath her parents’ place. Only once she’d stormed an additional block down the street did she stop, release David and crouch to the ground with her hands over the back of her neck with a strangled groan.

David couldn’t do more than extend a hand toward the defensive curve of her back before she popped back up again, nearly smacking him in the nose. Instead, she only upset his balance as he stumbled out of range.

She took a short angry breath through her nose and released it.

“I don’t want to talk about it, please?” Despite the attempt at aggression, her voice raised unwillingly, making it more of a plea than a demand.

“That’s super okay,” David agreed quickly. He wasn’t going to force her to explain. Family wasn’t something he talked about much either. Plus, he had bigger problems in mind. If he wanted Max to have any kind of stability, he’d have to put Killer’s concerns to rest - or sidestep them convincingly.

He wasn’t really sure joining the guard was the best way to do that.

Gwen was already heading toward the armory, though.

“Maybe I’ll head back and ask about the crafters,” David suggested after catching up with her purposeful steps. “Since I’m… probably better off in a non-violent position.”

“David.” Waiting until he turned to look at her, Gwen raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “The outer patrol - which we can volunteer for - probably sees the most fighting. With wildlife. That probably needs to be killed.” She lowered her voice, “And I don’t think I trust you in a non-violent position for longer than a week.”

“That’s a little hurtful.” He crossed his arms over his chest and admitted quietly, “But… maybe not super inaccurate.”

“You will just have to show off what a totally harmless dad you are to Killer some other way,” Gwen concluded at a normal volume, cutting right to the heart of the matter without hesitation. “This is a necessary job.”

And if her sentence could be interpreted more than one way, Gwen would be able to feign innocence with the best of them.

David deflated, arms dropping to his sides, “Alright. Let’s go.”

.

“This is super fucking boring.”

With perhaps more force than necessary, Max gouged a mark into a tree overhanging the river he’d been following for… a long time. Grudgingly, he’d had to admit Carol’s illusion or whatever was actually pretty good, considering he didn’t have some things he’d had before she sucked him into this place.

Like David’s cellphone.

Which he could have used to check the time, or distract himself. He could even have pulled up a compass app because somehow the internet worked fine despite large quantities of server farms vanishing or being destroyed over the past few months.

Instead, he was left wandering aimlessly downstream until he found civilization, since he had no idea where he was supposed to be. If he’d walked out here himself and gotten lost, he’d at least have had _some_ clue which way to go. But no. Sarah probably wouldn’t find that funny enough. Carol had to drop the new kid into the woods with no bearings at all.

Whatever. Max was pretty good at this shit, by now.

His main question was how long this was supposed to last.

“Is there, like, a time limit on this?” he asked aloud. Unfortunately, aside from the comments at the beginning, no one had answered anything he’d asked along the way. Even when he’d sworn a blue streak tripping over a half-buried sand turtle, there hadn’t been a peep of admonishment.

The sand turtle had shaken its little turrets and towers, revealing pearls hidden in the depths of the sand, and slipped into the water, vanishing from sight. Max hadn’t ever seen how detailed the sand castle they carried around was before, since usually they tried to take his fingers off. This one hadn’t cared one way or the other. He’d been ignored. Honestly, this was a walk in the park compared to really being out in the wilds.

It also kind of sucked.

Max reached out and tapped a lightly glowing seed pod hanging from the tree he was passing under. Instead of exploding on him, it gently changed colors.

Wow, it really was just him, wasn’t it? With Gwen and David - and later Anita - he had had such a small pool to choose from that he could tell himself the adults were the weird ones. Now he was forced to admit that magic seemed to have it in for him.

At least, magic that didn’t really think the way sapient beings did.

And he was currently in an illusion, probably made entirely from magic.

What could go wrong?

Carol was supposed to be controlling it; it’d probably be fine. After all, Max had been having a pretty peaceful time of it so far. As the thought occurred to him, the river bulged and Max fought back a curse.

A muddied arm slapped onto the bank ahead. Clawed finger tips swirled through with pale stone dug into the sandy soil and Max didn’t stick around to see what dragged itself out. He didn’t want to get lost, but he’d need to get out of sight before whatever it was knew he was there. It looked like Carol was upping the ante.

Max set out into the woods, taking as straight a path as he could, as quietly as he was capable of being. He didn’t want to leave any marks the creature could track him by, so he could only hope he’d be able to find his way back. Not that it _really_ mattered. It wasn’t real, of course.

His hands still felt cold, insides twisted as his throat went tight.

They couldn’t just let him follow the river, no. Probably the teachers had gotten bored or some shit.

He could still hear the creature, exiting the river with a wet slurp that made his hackles rise. It gurgled thickly, like bubbles in mud, and Max picked up the pace. How far had he gone from the river, anyway? He felt like he should be out of hearing range by now.

Max turned around.

The ground dropped out from under him, sneakers slipping in pebbles and loose dirt as he skidded down the bluff that hadn’t been there a moment before. Okay. Hands still held out for balance even as he kept his feet at the bottom of the incline, Max took in the grey seascape crashing against a rocky shore.

“Okay,” he repeated aloud. “This is new.”

Seals were gamboling in the waves to his left, dark shapes that rolled out of the water and onto the shore as they mock-battled. As they grew closer, Max revised his guess. Mottled grey and lilac, they were clearly not the mundane animals they resembled. They opened their mouths, allowing an awful, fleshy bubble to expand out of their throats. As the flesh grew, it gained form - something predatory that stretched onto four legs even as their last skin was pushed back like taking off a coat. The skins shriveled into nothing as they reached the end of their new forms’ lashing, whip-like tail. Their heads were canine, thick grey fur expanding into a mane, but their bodies were some mix of species. Lilac stripes resembling a tiger’s broke up their silhouettes, backs arcing unnaturally, claws sliding out of large, flat paws.

Max turned to run.

Right into a sand dune.

“This is not fucking useful!” He spat the sand from his mouth, wind whipping it around him as his eyes darted over the sudden desert landscape. There weren’t many plants or animals that he could see, but large flat planes of tan stone could be seen under places where the sand had parted.

That didn’t seem right, either.

Tiny lines of stone reached up into the air, turning at sharp angles to join the others. Thickening with a pulse of unseen energy that made Max’s hair stand on end, they began to form faster, arches and turrets spiraling upward in achingly angular jolts and twists.

“Nope,” Max took a stumbling step backward. He didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he was not _having_ it.

He turned around.

And his head slipped beneath the water.

He struggled to the surface, coughing and spluttering until he could see his breath misting in the air with regularity again. He gave one last, feeble cough as he kept treading water, bobbing down slightly when he took the chance to shove his hair out of his face. His teeth were already chattering; he had to get out of the water. As far as he could see, though, there was no end to it.

“Are you just trying to fucking kill me?” he gasped out, the cold seeping in so fast with his sodden hair and the dark depths of an ocean beneath him. Something lit up below, a pinprick of aquamarine light. Steadily, it branched out into a constellation that only continued to grow.

He needed to get out of this fucking illusion. Every time he turned around he was somewhere new- wait. It was _literally_ every time he turned. Surely this wasn’t easy? It must take _something_ out of Carol to keep changing the entire world of her… in between, they called it.

Max turned around.

He was in a forest of shining gem stone spikes.

He turned again.

The ground writhed beneath his feet, oozing greenish-brown ichor.

He turned, practically spinning as he dropped and stumbled and flew, jerked around by the changing scenery until he tripped over something and fell to solid ground.

The platypus stared at him along with the rest of the class. She must have literally followed him to school. And then tripped him. That aside, the point was that Max had made it back. Totally unharmed despite Carol’s sudden assassination attempt. Oh shit, he probably still needed to run, though. He-

The platypus clamped down on his foot.

“Fuck!”

.

“Yeah, we’re pretty avid outdoorsmen,” Gwen explained, projecting an air of boredom as she buffed her nails on her shoulder before holding them out for her inspection. “So border patrol is probably the best place for us.”

Marna was a small, stocky woman with straw-colored hair tightly pulled back in an intense braided bun. Despite the apocalyptic scenario she’d found herself in, she still had a decent amount of make-up highlighting her angular features. She also seemed entirely unimpressed by Gwen’s posturing, if the polite, unwavering smile was anything to go by.

“We’ll see,” she conceded shortly. “We do need people for the outskirts - badly - so it’s not unlikely. You will, however, need to be assessed for training first. Just to place… how _much_ you will need. Darrell will take care of that.” Nodding to her right, she gestured at the door in a clear dismissal. “Go ahead.”

The armory appeared as small as any other unit from the outside, but within, it expanded to rival the town hall. Entry had brought them to Marna’s office, which she evidently kept up in much the same spot a receptionist’s desk would usually be found. It was an interesting choice, given that she was technically head of the guard. David expected she must prefer to know who was coming into the armory at any given time.

It wasn’t much of an _armory_ , though. Given the rooms they’d glimpsed, it more resembled a barracks. There was a forge somewhere, since throughout their short interview with Marna, the striking clang of metal being forged had not let up once, but it wasn’t visible through any of the open doors leading out of Marna’s office.

“I heard everything,” said the young man in the room they’d been directed. Grey cots lined the walls, along with an eclectic collection of dressers; the young man was perched on one cot halfway between the room’s two doors. He put aside the book he’d been reading and stood up, about on par with Gwen in height, offering a friendly hand. They accepted it in turns and he grinned, “I’m Darrell. You’ll want to sit down for the assessment.”

“Okay?” David agreed in light confusion. He must have wanted to go over it verbally, first. Gwen followed suit, sitting beside David on the bed across from Darrell.

“You can go first,” Darrell decided, winking one wide, grey eye at David cheerfully. He had a round face and wild black hair that nearly disguised the little tufts of black feathers past his temples.

Suspicion crawled over David a moment too late - hadn’t the snake mentioned something about Elwetritschen being birdlike? Or chickens or something?

The world spun like he’d taken a blender to it, colors mashing and tearing in a whirlwind that deposited him in a dim-lit warehouse. Large, metal shipping containers stacked up into an infinite darkness in dull rainbow piles of forgotten corporate debris.

Darrell’s upbeat voice echoed through the room. “First, we’ll see how you do with one of the more common creatures to threaten the border! Don’t worry; none of this is real!”

The nearest container opened with a metallic shriek.

.

“Fucking shitty useless animal!” Max yelped, painfully ripping the platypus from her hold on his shoe and leaping to his feet to shove her outward like a shield. “Don’t try anything! She’s poisonous!”

“Venomous,” corrected the newest person on Max’s shitlist: a tween with mostly purple hair, black roots, and a worried expression. She pointed at the platypus, “And where did it come from?”

“What did you do?” Hector demanded, holding Carol’s limp form in his arms.

“She’s still breathing?” Sarah interjected smoothly, garnering a sharp nod from Hector before she moved forward. Swiftly, she grabbed Max’s wrists and twisted his grip free of the platypus, letting her fall to the ground with a disgruntled _mwak_. Instinctively, Max tried to pull back but she yanked him in closer in response. “Max.” Her voice was solid and unyielding, and Max found himself meeting her flat stare as if she’d gripped his chin and turned it herself. “We’re going to bring in your parents and we’re all going to have a little talk. Before that, I need one thing from you.”

His chest filled instantly with the sharpness of ice.

His parents? How the fuck-

“ **Sleep** ," Sarah intoned firmly and everything went black.

.

Gwen wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, though Darrell seemed happy enough to explain. He was rambling about different dimensions and the flexibility of reality as David sat utterly still, staring blankly ahead. Despite his seeming cheer, Darrell occasionally flicked David an uneasy glance or winced randomly as he spoke, these occurrences increasing as the conversation went on.

Cutting himself off in the middle of a sentence Gwen had politely tuned out after half an hour of magical nonsense, Darrell turned blatantly toward David, his anxiously bouncing knee stilling completely. He grimaced in the ensuing silence, leaning slightly away.

“Okay, that was my fault,” he admitted aloud as light came back into David’s eyes. David put a hand to his temple, swaying slightly before he shook himself out of it. “I was kind of curious and I really shouldn’t have been. You did um… you did really well and that was really gross.”

“Sorry…?” David offered weakly, but Darrell shook his head.

“You were doing well and I got kind of excited, but I shouldn’t have thrown that thing at you.”

David sounded a little nauseous himself, “There was so much slime.”

“Yeah,” Darrell nodded like a bobble-head. “Yeah, they do that.” They shared an unhappily dazed look for a moment before Darrell lit up again, eyes whipping to Gwen. “Now, it’s your turn!”

“Oh, joy,” Gwen muttered. Whatever had gone on, it seemed to have grossed even _David_ out, and Gwen was _not_ looking forward to it. Before Darrell could do his whatever-the-hell, a streak of purple dashed into the room. The girl stumbled over the foot of a cot but caught herself, windmilling her arms for balance as she settled back on her feet.

Darrell’s lips quirked in amusement, “Something wrong, Taryl?”

She ignored him, addressing Gwen and David directly, “Are you Max’s parents?”

David’s _sort of_ was delivered simultaneously to Gwen’s _no_ and they exchanged a look. Gwen shrugged uncaringly, prompting David to sigh and stand. He’d known Gwen didn’t share quite the same depth of attachment to Max as he had, after all. Plus, Gwen still needed to go through with her own assessment. It’d be fine if he handled this alone.

Even if he’d sort of hoped Max wouldn’t get into trouble his very first day. He was still trying to settle _himself_ back into his own skin, now that they were in civilization again. Maybe it wouldn’t be too terrible.

“I am,” he corrected. “What did he do?”

“He knocked out a teacher,” Taryl informed him bluntly. “And no one knows how.”

David ran a hand through his hair wearily and fought an inappropriate laugh. Well, maybe Max wasn't even at fault, if they didn't understand what had happened. It was possible. Slightly.

“Goody,” he said finally with a tight smile. “I do love a good mystery.”


	6. Distractions

Max was pretty used to sitting in the principal’s office. Granted this, he was pretty sure, was the prison, but the feeling was the same. Sarah had somehow mind fucked him unconscious and he’d woken up to her glaring at him from across the room the same way the parents of his latest victim usually did. This time he hadn’t conned some kid out of their lunch money, though. This time it was self defense. He’d done nothing wrong.

Yet here he was, sitting in a small, locked room in the weird dungeon-like basement of town hall. There weren’t bars anywhere, but the uncomfortable bench, metal table and chair that felt very interrogation-room made it clear they used this room to contain people. Sarah was leaning in the far corner and Killer sat across the table that stood between them like the world’s shittiest barrier. She was taller than he was by about a head, but he was more solidly built and they both moved as if they knew they were dangerous. Max watched them stubbornly, not saying a word until they did.

Sarah had a long face, somehow made thinner by the massive scar, and her dark brown eyes were devoid of warmth at the moment, leaving them shark-like in her severe expression. Meanwhile, Killer wore a smile across the tenseness of his strong jaw and seemed comfortable playing good cop to Sarah’s agitated bad cop. His black hair stood naturally upright, stiff and coarse; it added to the illusion that his entire face made up a rectangle. Really, they could have been taken straight out of a James Bond movie if it hadn’t been for their worn and patched clothes. Killer tapped a finger thoughtfully on the table, breaking Max from his silent staring.

“Now, Max,” the sharp-eyed man said for the tenth time since Max woke up from Sarah’s bullshit. “We just want to know what you did to Carol.”

“She tried to kill me,” Max repeated, also for the tenth time. “And I’m not saying fuck all about what I did in _self defense_ until I have a lawyer or something.”

Already crossed firmly over her chest, Sarah’s arms tightened, muscles visible even through her thick sleeves. She scowled, leaning forward slightly, “I am in charge of the safety of my classes, Max, but Carol is my second. She would _never_ harm a child. If you’re going to lie, you might pick a better story.”

They weren’t listening to him and they weren’t going to believe him. This was his goddamn parents all over again. Max returned her scowl with a well-practiced glare and laid down on the bench, rolling to face the wall with a hissed, “Go fuck a rotten watermelon.”

“Maybe you’ll talk when your parents get here,” Sarah shot back vindictively, forcing Max to fight down a flinch. She’d said that when she’d knocked him out, too. Killer had clarified that they’d sent for David and Gwen, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear that his ‘parents’ were supposedly coming to get him. The last time he’d seen them…

Well, they were breaking their promise and spilling everything to Sal. Everything about David, anyway. It turned out David hadn’t been quite as confident in the Sheriff’s bias as he’d pretended. When he heard the two calling him a murderer, he’d just played along like they were having some kind of nervous breakdown until Sal insisted they stay a night to calm their nerves. Yet as night fell, he had woken Max and they’d lit out like the camp was on fire. David had said something about the sheer abundance of evidence DNA testing around the camp could turn up if Sal investigated to put an end to Max’s parents’ claims - especially if they had tried to go through with a legal adoption after what his parents had said. Max hadn’t really been listening. It was novel just to have an adult really keep a promise. And one as fucking weird as David’s had been, at that.

So he was sure at least David was going to show up, if they’d really sent for him now.

Pretty sure.

Kind of sure.

Yeah, he’d been in town one day and he’d already fucked up, but it really hadn’t been his fault this time. Of course, they’d shoved him into isolation and he couldn’t explain that yet. But David would believe him when he got the chance to talk to him. He was sure of it.

Pretty sure.

...Kind of sure.

Max pulled his hood up and pressed his forehead to the wall, still laying on the bench and emanating “fuck off” vibes as Sarah kept talking at him. He wasn’t listening anymore. He knew the tone pretty well - heard it in a lot of schools before his parents gave up and let him stay in a shithole that prided itself on never expelling a student for non-violent infractions. Then that righteous anger had faded to resignation and later to apathy. People who spoke like Sarah did wouldn’t care soon enough. If Max could just sit here a little longer and ignore it.

A knock came at the door and Sarah finally shut up.

“I brought his dad,” came a muffled, young voice. Look at that, saved by the knock. Warily, Max turned and sat up.

Sarah opened the door and smiled at the purple-haired girl, “Thank you, Taryl.”

 _He loves me_ , Max reminded himself internally when he caught David’s eyes and saw how the skin pulled tight at their corners and his mouth was set in his lecturing smile.

“I hear you’ve gotten in some trouble, kiddo.”

No. Nope. Max did not want to deal with this David right now. No strained smiles and upbeat lectures about how hard it was fitting in and how Max needed to learn better coping mechanisms and to not fuck over everything he touched. Okay, maybe he didn’t say that, exactly. Not the point. He needed the David that was on _his side_ , thanks. 

Time to head that shit off at the fucking breach. 

“No, I defended myself when that feather-head tried to fucking _kill me_!”

Okay, he could have delivered the information more calmly. The stone in David’s expression broke with concern before it wiped clean and he walked across the room, turning smartly and sitting beside Max with a big smile Max recognized as the same one he used to pull out for Sheriff Sal. His voice, however, hid ice shards in the pleasant question, “Does anyone want to explain?”

“Max keeps saying Carol tried to kill him, but he was just in her in between,” Sarah jumped in with a hint of aggression sharpening her words. “He was completely safe; he woke from the illusion and Carol passed out. If anyone did anything, it was _him_.”

“She changed it,” Max protested, directing his words only at David. The other two weren’t going to listen to him. “It was supposed to be fucking woodlands navigation and you _know_ I can do that. I wasn’t going to fuck it up, but she made some fucking monster come out of the river and then every time I turned around I was somewhere new with something else trying to kill me but I figured it out and I just turned really fast until I got out. And yeah,” Max turned to Sarah with a venomous tilt to his lips after his rushed explanation. Conclusively, he spat out the words, “The murderous bitch passed out. Fucking sue me.”

“That does sound scary,” Killer nodded absently, having begun filling out his clipboard as Max spoke. He held up a hand when Sarah tried to butt in and she fell back with a silent snarl. “But Carol can’t hurt you with her illusions. They’re not real.” He looked up, fixing Max with a heavy gaze that probably worked wonders on making toddlers feel like he was taking them seriously. Max was less impressed. “She couldn’t have been trying to kill you - it would never have worked.”

Max wasn’t so sure. Before that arm had come out of the river, the whole illusion had held a sort of strangeness to the sounds. It wasn’t something he’d noticed in the moment, but looking back, it had all snapped into sharp focus later, losing the strangeness when the first monster attacked.

Basically, it had suddenly felt real. Or it had _sounded_ real, if Max was specific. The tone had changed and there was something else that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Then _you_ explain what the fuck she was doing,” Max leaned back, only just realizing David had put a hand between his shoulders when he accidentally pushed against it. He didn’t bother to move away, just changing the angle of his lean so he jutted his shoulder into David’s side instead. He was technically being nice, not crushing David’s hand into the stone wall.

“She… isn’t really the type to scare students for fun,” Sarah said slowly.

“Max knows not to lie about life or death situations,” David replied, the _anymore_ they both understood should have followed the sentence going unsaid. Neither of them could have forgotten Daniel in any capacity. Max wasn’t sure if he’d really forgiven or been forgiven for it, either. They didn’t talk about it.

Max dug his shoulder a little harder into David’s side and shoved his hands deeper in his pockets with a small scowl. The hand on his back turned to a light warning grip on his other shoulder, so Max eased up enough that he was leaning idly again. David was on his side right now, after all. As far as he could tell.

“Maybe Max should come home and start school next week, once he’s had time to get over this not so fun experience and you’ve questioned the teacher… Carol, right?” David smiled like it was a shield between them. “I sure hope this all turns out to be a big misunderstanding!”

Max kind of hoped it was, too, but he couldn’t see how it could be anything other than Carol realizing she was, in fact, magical and thus hated Max. Just like almost everything else.

“Actually,” Sarah started, but David stood up, clapping his hands on his thighs like he’d been sitting long enough to accumulate a layer of dust or something.

“Yeah, I’m going to take Max home now; it seems to me he’s done nothing wrong and he’s had a pretty scary day in the illusion and then a, uh, jail cell?” He offered the word as if he weren’t certain, but the tightness in his jaw belied the confused tone. “Weird place to bring a little kid, but I haven’t been in town long - you probably use this room for private meetings like this one all the time right? Not just for Max?”

His hand on Max’s shoulder was pushing him towards the door, guiding him around the table and the two unhappy adults in their way.

“Well, I do need to attend training, so Max and I will head out. Bye!” David waved cheerily when Killer tried to say something else, shutting the door behind them and walking briskly away with Max.

Okay, Max actually didn’t have any complaints so far. He was out of the tiny interrogation room or whatever, David hadn’t lectured him yet, and Sarah didn’t seem to be following them.

“I don’t think I like them very much,” David muttered quietly through his tight smile as he guided them out of the town hall. Considering this was practically a one star review from David, Max couldn’t help a snort, relaxing his hands from the fists they’d curled into. “And Max? You can tell me _exactly_ what Carol did once we get back.”

“Kind of did, but ok,” Max shrugged nonchalantly to free himself of David’s hand now that they were in public. Citizens of Standing were still out in force mid-morning, haggling services with one another and selling to travelers who had no intention to stay. It was easy to pick out the travelers - they were tense, road-worn, and stuck out like a sore thumb among the cheerful Standing folk.

Standing had felt a little too good to be true since they walked in, but Max still thought it was nice to have his suspicions confirmed. The shy teacher of the three he’d met had already tried to kill him and the scarred teacher had immediately thrown the blame on him. Probably everyone here had some dark secret beneath the carefree laughter and good-natured price gouging. He knew for a fact that they did not need to demand that much in trade for flour. The vines could upchuck anything they’d eaten.

But the travelers didn’t have a lot of choice with winter coming soon and many farms having fallen to ruin. So they could only submit to the trade or half-heartedly haggle for what they needed. 

Max ducked a stray, enthusiastic arm from one of the hagglers. He didn’t really need to bother. David had shot an arm out idly between the two of them, letting the wild gesture bounce off his forearm without more than a sigh from the former counselor. It was definitely not just Max going through weird shit still, but David kept shrugging off any mention of it. Except the voice stuff. That had rattled him a little.

“Alright,” David opened the front door of their assigned home, letting Max enter ahead of him. He pulled the door shut behind him, “What happened?”

“I did tell you already,” Max pointed out. “Carol tried to kill me or freak me out or something.”

“I mean, start from the top with a little more detail, kiddo,” David clarified, sitting on the back of the couch. He flexed his hands and knit his fingers together, bouncing them slightly on his knee as he prompted, “So Carol put you into that illusion thing?”

“Yeah…” Max leaned against the couch beside him, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets. It didn’t take long to recount the incident. David’s hands had stopped bouncing, but his knee had taken up the cause by the end of it, brows furrowed and clasped fingers brought in front of his lips.

“You said it sounded different?” David picked out with acuity Max didn’t usually expect from him. Then again, this was a matter of life and death and David had a… better track record with that. “Can you tell me what you mean? Was it louder or something?”

Well, Max had been having some fun experiences with sounds lately. He was pretty sure he could mimic the change in ambiance almost perfectly - there had been some kind of background drone under the artificial birdsong - but he couldn’t describe in words how it had changed. However, Max hadn’t told David about the whole mimic thing yet. Or his phone call with Harrison. And the… other one. Of course, he hadn’t had time and hadn’t really wanted to tell him, but abruptly, the omission felt heavy. As if he should have said something. Which was ridiculous. Max didn’t have to tell David anything unless he wanted to tell him. He didn’t _owe_ David. 

But it would kind of help out in this specific situation.

His throat felt a little dry and he swallowed before admitting reluctantly, “I can just show you, if you want.”

“Sure?” David agreed questioningly, comfortably deep in his natural state of confusion as he fixed Max with a bit more focus, thoughts clearly leaving whatever he’d been planning and settling back in the present. Max licked his lips and shoved his hands into his pockets, David’s eyes flicking down to follow the movement and his brows drawing closer together. “Max? How are you going to show me?”

Might as well just do it. Then he’d explain - not everything, but some of it.

Max let that thing in the back of his throat drop and mimicked the tinny drone of the illusion perfectly. After a second for David to adjust to the inhuman noise emitting smoothly from Max’s throat, Max switched to the “real” sound. It had lost its tin echo and spiked higher.

“That’s how it changed when the first monster showed up,” Max explained, dropping the mimicry. “I didn’t really notice it when it happened but I think…” The birdsong from the start of the illusion that he’d somehow known unerringly floated up in his head and Max concluded aloud, “I think I can just remember sounds whenever the fuck I want, now. And you know, mimic them. That’s how I could do the Kronic voice. Because I heard you do it.” He switched to David’s voice, the bubbly tone David had used for most of camp clicking easily into place as he said, “See? Oh that’s trippy. Fuck. Oh man, hearing your voice swear is still weird as shit.” Hastily abandoning that, he realized there still hadn’t been a response and peered up at David’s expression, hoping to gauge his reaction. It was difficult to read, spiking Max’s anxiety up against his will. His hands were clammy and his stomach was weird. Why?

David loved him, he reminded himself. Why was he so anxious?

“I called Harrison about it last night,” Max blurted before he could stop himself. “About your voice thing and my voice thing and he said it was just because we were so close to the volcano when it went and you were at that hellhole of a camp for years so it’s not too fucked up or anything. It’s not like I’m possessed.”

“Max,” David interjected when he paused to take a breath. The former counselor’s face had twisted into concern for some reason, an expression Max was too familiar with for his liking. He touched Max’s cheek, his voice soft, “It’s okay. I’m just thinking.”

For a moment, the anxiety abated and Max was empty.

Fury quickly burned through the gap.

He stepped backwards, out of reach, snapping, “Don’t act like I’m a fucking child, David. I’m just filling the silence because you take so goddamn long to form a single shitty thought.”

“Sure, Jan,” David said, apparently unthinkingly, because he covered his mouth with a hand afterwards, looking at Max with wide eyes.

Suspicious, Max jutted his jaw stubbornly and demanded, “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing,” David waved it off when it was clear Max hadn't caught the reference, but Max could see his lips twitch as he stood. “I had that thought, you know. Give me a second.” He walked over to the kitchen side of the room and opened drawers until he found the silverware again. Raised braids were carved into the wood of half the cabinets, the other half being a mish-mash of materials and colors that pointed to them being scavenged from a town. The silverware turned out to be in one of the cheaper drawers and David removed it entirely from its housing with a small grunt. “Okay,” he said, shaking the drawer and producing a horrible metallic rain of sound. He raised his voice over the noise, waving his free hand towards himself, “Whisper something to me!”

There was only one appropriate response to this kind of bullshit, “What the goddamn hell."

“Please,” David added loudly with half a smile.

Rolling his eyes and feeling a little attacked, Max hunched in on himself and whispered, “Fuck you, David.”

“Rude,” David replied promptly, before asking at a clear, normal volume, “Can you hear me, Max?”

“Yeah,” Max grouched, done with whatever this was. “Why?”

David promptly abandoned shaking the drawer, lining it up with its home and sliding it back into place. He straightened with a grin, “Back in the grasslands, when you set that radio off in my ear I could still hear you clearly despite how quietly you were speaking. I thought my hearing was getting scarily better but it’s just you.” Max was ready to protest that that might still be the case but David shook his head at the rebellious set to Max’s jaw and elaborated, “I whispered that last question, Max. I could barely hear it, myself, but you could hear it well enough to reply.”

Well, that did seem kind of definitive. Especially since... thinking back, Max could hear his own whisper easily, too. And the drone in the background of the illusion. Max was manipulating the sound somehow to let them communicate or was… talking through the other sounds and had super hearing? It could be something else, but Max didn’t like the idea of David experimenting on him any further. Plus, this kind of... sucked. Before, David had been the weirder one of them.

“You- you-” Wind taken out of his sails, Max scrabbled for something that would even the playing field. He didn’t want the whole takeaway of this conversation to be that Max was a total freak. His gaze dropped to David’s sharp cheekbones and he pointed at them accusingly, “You’re getting pointy! And you’re too strong for a goddamn human!”

Reflexively, David touched his cheek in dismay at the reminder and Max barked out a triumphant laugh, giddy with relief and anger that mixed strangely in his stomach like golden bubbles of indigestion.

Max’s teeth grit together in a mean grin as he pressed, “See? You know it’s true! We’re _both_ fucked up!”

The words lingered in the air with a stillness Max hadn’t expected, sour on his tongue. David was just looking at him, stricken, and Max lowered his hand. When David finally broke free of whatever was happening in his head, he took a deep breath. “Max, I don’t think you’re fucked up. This mimicry… You said Harrison thought-”

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Max interrupted. He wasn’t going to listen to this right now. His head felt a little light and everything was slightly off-balance. Thoughts had lost their meaning and Max’s mind was sinking down into a wordless realization that he didn’t like one bit. So he wouldn’t acknowledge it. “Sorry or whatever.”

“Max-” David tried again, but Max wasn’t having it.

He broke in again, more insistently this time, his words cutting through the air like razor wire, “Can you just- don’t you have fucking training?”

Max got a searching look from David for that one, but he met it eye to eye with unwavering irritation until the counselor sighed and gave in.

“Alright, Max,” he said quietly. Max kind of hated that he’d probably be able to remember every hint of sorrow and promise in those two words until the day he died. David walked to the door and opened it, waiting at the threshold, “Let’s go.”

They made the trip past the armory in silence, heading towards a set of training grounds that David eventually murmured had been pointed out to him as the place to return when he’d gotten the domestic issues sorted out.

“For fuck’s sake!” Gwen managed to gasp out from a little ways down, heading towards them at a jog. Her hair was pulled back into her customary ponytail but she had borrowed a gray bandana from someone to keep her bangs out of her face as well. Since her face was slick with sweat and stains had formed on her clothes, this had probably been a sound idea. Catching sight of the two of them, she slowed down and panted, “David. I’m sorry I ever called you an asswipe of a taskmaster.”

Taken aback, David asked, “When did you call me that?”

“Pick it up!” came the shout from up-field and Gwen wheezed breathlessly, making a sort of whistling squeak noise rather than a human sound before she passed them by at a quicker pace without answering the question.

“She said it to me, behind your back,” Max explained matter-of-factly once Gwen had turned the corner of the yard and started along the short side away from them.

“Oh.” David sounded conflicted, but he didn’t have time to process the insult and its abrupt repeal before they were approached by the woman who had just shouted at Gwen. It was someone Max hadn’t met yet. She had thick white hair and stood at Gwen’s height but had twice her width and a scowl broad enough to match. In fact, a lot of the people in Standing were thick walls of muscle, now that Max was thinking about it. The mayor, Bonquisha, was built like a brick house and Nurf’s cousin or uncle or whatever was also enormous and looked like he could bench press Nurf. Not to mention the third teacher today, the one who had stayed back to watch the class when everything went to shit. Max would normally have guessed it had something to do with fighting for their lives the past few months, but that didn’t make much sense, considering Standing was protected by the Elwetritschen. Yet they all seemed pretty combat-ready.

“Ma?” David squeaked.

“So you did survive,” the white-haired woman crossed her arms over her chest. “Why didn’t you go home? I had to go looking for you and I had just about decided you’d got yourself eaten.”

Max’s idle musings ground to a halt. Hold up.

“Hold up,” Max repeated aloud when no other thoughts could form in his head. “You’re David’s _Mom_?”

“Leticia Hart, at your service. Kept my own name,” she confirmed stonily, still staring down her increasingly nervous son. “You can call me Ms. Lettie or ma’am, unless you want to do a hundred sit-ups.”

She didn’t look a lot like David. They did have the same nose and Max supposed David did actually have some visible muscle on his beanpole skeleton now, but… David’s face was made for smiling, as much as Max hated to admit it, and he had blue-green eyes that sometimes reflected his every thought. Lettie was a wall of a woman - information stopped at her skin and he couldn’t read a thing off her. Her eyes were sharp and grey, but her hair might have been red once.

She extended her arms perfunctorily, “Well?”

“Hi, Ma,” David said weakly, walking into the hug and gingerly returning the gruff squeeze and release. He was a bit quick to back away, Max noted, and unthinkingly brushing his own shoulder as if to wipe away the touch.

Weird. Max had expected a… warmer greeting, given that it was David. And David’s _mom_. He hadn’t gotten over that yet. Hands landed on his shoulders and Max was abruptly moved a half step forward and to the side, closer to David.

“This is Max; I uh, kind of adopted him just before the world… changed,” David introduced him with a wince. “I would have told you, but it happened pretty quick. He’s my godson, actually. Remember Damien Thakur? My friend from high school?”

At the mention, Max jumped and fought to keep his glare internal. What the hell did David think he was doing? Lettie was going to call their bluff! God, why did this fucker’s family have to end up being here, too? Gwen’s was coincidence enough.

“No,” Lettie said bluntly and Max’s stomach dropped further even as his rage climbed. Yet her next sentence dowsed the flames with startling effectiveness, “You know I couldn’t keep all your little friends straight.”

Oh. Max hadn’t expected that follow up. She really was falling for this.

“Well, he had Max ten years ago and made me the godfather. I told you that Christmas, but we were probably too busy for it to really register,” David explained with nary a tremor. Max had heard David lie before and usually he was _okay_ but this was… different. Smooth. Practiced. “It turns out Max’s living situation wasn’t actually all that great and Damien wasn’t really a very good friend, so things worked out that Max ended up with me. He’s...” David paused, hands tightening on Max’s shoulders for a moment, “I guess he’s your grandson, now.”

“Huh.” Lettie didn’t stoop down to Max’s level like David usually did. She gave him a once-over from above. “Guess I’ll make cookies after my shift is up. You’ll both help.”

David broke out into a grin that still held a sharp edge of nerves, smoothing down invisible wrinkles on Max’s shoulder before releasing him with an instinctive, “Yes, ma’am.”

“I saw your name on my roster,” Lettie continued, switching topics with ruthless efficiency. She raised her eyebrows, “Last time you came home - four years ago?”

“Six,” David muttered through his smile, but she didn’t react. Probably, Max’s new super-hearing or whatever was to blame for him being able to pick it up since David didn’t glance guiltily down at Max for having said something in such a dark tone where he might overhear.

“You weren’t exactly…” She wobbled a hand in a vague gesture, “In shape. How rough do you need it?”

“I kept up conditioning after that,” David protested feebly, his smile unwavering but his arms wrapping slightly around himself over his chest. “I’m up to par; better, since I’m not a teenager anymore.”

“Really?” Lettie glanced over at Gwen and back to David, “Lap her five times to catch up and then you can jog with her for the next ten. She’s our other new recruit-”

“We know Gwen,” Max interrupted.

David’s eyes rolled heavenward for a moment as if asking for divine intervention before Lettie said sharply, “You don’t interrupt your elders, son.”

“It _is_ rude,” David murmured, not quite in agreement but rather in a detached tone Max wasn’t used to hearing from David.

“That’s going to be five laps for you,” she instructed, hands on her hips.

Max was about to protest when David stepped ever so slightly in front of him. The neutrality of David’s stance had fallen away completely. To the untrained eye, he may have seemed to just shift his weight, but Max had grown incredibly familiar with David’s protective posture and this was definitely it. His back was tense and his shoulders forcibly low, hands open but stiff at his sides.

“Max already has punishment duty on dishes later for acting up in class today,” David lied, since he had told Max nothing of the sort. Or at least, Max hoped it was a lie. He was fairly sure. “I know we don’t like to double up; I’ll just extend it to tomorrow, too. Since he is _my_ son.”

She tilted her head to the side slightly and the resemblance to David when he was sizing up a creature out in the field suddenly hit Max full force. Maybe they did look a little alike.

“Alright, Davey,” she said coolly. “Five to catch up and another fifteen after that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” David replied neutrally, turning on his heel to start off around the grounds as commanded without mentioning the additional five laps added onto his total. She watched him go with a hawk’s intensity before swinging that gaze down to Max.

“Well,” she said, standing in a parade rest and linking her hands neatly behind her back, “I suppose we should talk.”

Max already wasn’t looking forward to it. He didn’t think he was imagining all the weird shit David was doing. Maybe David was worried about the whole fake adoption, but Max… didn’t think that was all there was to it. Not with how David had barely hugged Lettie and just now physically moved between them - even if it was only an inch or two.

“We don’t have to,” Max suggested casually. “We can always stand here in silence and watch Gwen struggle to survive basic cardio.”

Her lips twitched and Max relaxed slightly at her ability to, at least, understand humor. “We have time to get to know each other without… your father hovering over us.” Her amusement faded into a light frown. “I really thought I’d never have grandchildren, after he broke up with Vanessa. He wasn’t really the dating type.” She tilted her head again, assessingly, “It seems fate provides.”

Despite this honestly somewhat uncomfortable stare, Max felt something else in that sentence needed to be addressed.

“Vanessa?” Max echoed, voice caught somewhere between horror and fascination. “A human woman agreed to date him? And he broke up with her?”

“Well, the details are fuzzy,” Lettie admitted. She swept a hand to the side, “It doesn’t matter now. She was a good match and a legacy soldier but it didn’t work out for some ridiculous reason. What I’d like to learn about is you.”

How the hell was Max supposed to react to this? He was supposed to be her grandson now? He barely knew her! How was a grandson even supposed to act? His dādī jī lived across the fucking planet! He’d met them once and he barely remembered it! Max would just have to wing it.

“What do you want to know?” he asked as nonchalantly as he could, watching David pass Gwen easily instead of turning back to meet Lettie’s gaze again. He could still see her looking at him a while longer in his periphery before she returned to supervising David and Gwen.

“How old are you?”

While she got points for not asking if Max was short for anything, David had already sort of mentioned his age.

“I’m ten, almost eleven,” Max answered easily, focusing _very hard_ on how Gwen’s face was probably the same color as the red used in warning signs on hazardous machinery. For some reason, the way David had acted around Lettie made him feel like he had to be careful here, even if he wasn't sure why.

“Your birthday’s coming up then; when is it?” Lettie didn’t look down at him or unlink her arms from behind her back as she spoke. It was a gruff sort of neutrality that was belied by her continued questions.

“December 26,” Max supplied, searching for something else to say that would fill this awkward silence. Suddenly, like a lightbulb went off, Max realized how he could turn the conversation around. They didn’t have anything in common - except David. “When is David’s birthday, anyway? I’d expect him to be crowing about it every year but he’s actually pretty quiet.”

He did have to keep in mind that he had supposedly known David his whole life, though. Hence why he'd lied that David was quiet about it. He still thought David would make a big deal of it when it came, but Lettie hadn't seen David in six years, apparently. That was enough time for that to change.

“February thirteenth; a day off from a holiday like you.” At the mention of David’s birthday, Lettie smiled. That simple act transformed her whole face and it turned out those strong cheekbones could turn into sweet apples. She didn’t relax her stance but her eyes lit up as she confided in that rough voice of hers, “He was always so disappointed he couldn’t be born one day later. When he was small, he’d say, “Ma! Couldn’t you have held me in a little longer?’”

Okay, David hadn’t changed much. Besides the whole… yeah. Max supposed David hadn’t changed much _before_ everything went wrong and he became kind of a serial killer, since he retained the bubbly naivete even afterwards. For a while. He could still pull it out every so often, anyway.

Lettie coughed out a laugh, hiding her mouth for a moment and emerging with a stony expression back in place. “Of course, childbirth doesn’t work like that. I don’t want you getting any funny ideas about reproduction, son. Babies come when they come.”

No, nope, Max was fine not thinking about that or getting ‘funny ideas.’

“Yeah, no, I’m totally good on the talk,” he denied quickly. “I get it.”

Lettie glanced down at him and changed tacks with all the grace of a derailed train, “So you’ve been with David a few months now. There weren’t any relatives that could take you in?”

He couldn’t help the bitter glare forming for a moment but he _could_ at least push it back down, “They didn’t realize anything was wrong. Some of them still don’t get it.”

Basically all of them since Max hadn’t had any contact and Anita was still convinced she needed to get him away from David.

“I see,” she shifted her weight between her heels and her toes before settling, no longer watching him. Her gaze was fixed on David as he passed Gwen a second time. “David is a sweet boy. I’m sure he is… kind to you. But he can be a bit…” she trailed off, collected herself, and straightened her shoulders. Her tone hardened as she said, “You may feel he’s better than whatever was happening where you were, but I’d like you to come to me if you need anything. Three meals a day and kindness are not everything a parent should do.”

Damn. If Max was reading this right, Lettie was basically calling David unreliable. Or maybe just not that smart, which Max couldn’t argue, but unreliable? David? Despite himself, Max felt his stomach curdle slightly. He didn’t know anything that would make her think that, but Lettie had already dropped a few bombs Max hadn’t known about David. She was his mom. She’d known him his whole life. If she thought he was unreliable, maybe… Maybe those emotions on top of which Max had been slowly building a foundation weren’t as rock solid as he’d hoped. After all, David was kind of a flake, sometimes. When it came to standing up for himself. But… not for Max.

The realization was like a cold splash of water in his gut. It washed away the sour and left a different, cleaner anxiety in its wake. David did stand up for Max. He’d done it not five minutes ago. And again with Killer and Sarah earlier today. In fact, David pretty much constantly went to bat for Max if he wasn’t the one who caused the whole problem in the first place. Sometimes even then.

He’d handled weeks of Max hating him and come out the other end of a few time-bending months of murder and Max’s plans going haywire saying he _wanted_ to adopt Max. Even after Max admitted to filling out the papers himself. David loved him and that... probably wouldn't change.

With something akin to hope heating up beneath the anxious bubbling of his stomach, Max snorted. “Yeah, thanks but no thanks, Granny. David and I are doing fine.” He paused as Lettie stared at him a moment and realized what he’d said, adding hastily, “I’m not calling you Granny because you’re- I mean, I don’t think of you as my-”

“You can call me Granny,” Lettie said with grim finality, arms held properly behind her back but a non-regulation smirk hooking the side of her lips. “I’m glad to hear David’s exceeding my expectations of him.”

He’d meant it as an insult about her age and he wasn’t sure she didn’t know that.

“Yeah, okay,” Max agreed, defeated and unwilling to make eye contact ever again. Hopefully she’d just let him stand in silence for the rest of the afternoon.

She did not.

By the time David and Gwen had finished laps, several mock spars, and a variety of repetitive workouts Max was glad to skip, Lettie had gone through Max’s favorite book to his worst subjects to his views on certain pre-apocalypse political situations that she’d explain in exacting detail so he could reply without having known about it beforehand. It was kind of exhausting. Plus, she still somehow delivered a scathing review of Gwen and David’s needed improvements and outlined a plan for their training for the next two weeks that proved she had kept an eagle eye on their progress throughout the interrogation. Standing disaffectedly through it, David didn’t seem all that winded, but Gwen was huffing in air like it was going to run out.

“Cool. Thanks. Let’s go home,” she moaned to David when Lettie ended the lecture.

“Ah, actually,” he began nervously and Gwen covered her face with both hands.

She took a deep breath and exhaled the tired demand, “What is it now?”

“Max and I are going to go make cookies with Ma and you’re invited, if you want and Ma is okay with it?” He glanced between Lettie and Gwen, arms spread dramatically wide as if physically showing off the offer for their perusal.

“Sure,” Lettie agreed gruffly, picking up a clipboard and a bag from the sidelines. “You’ll still call me ma’am, though, Turner.”

Gwen stared at Lettie for roughly ten seconds before transferring her gaze to David. Looking them both up and down revealed exactly nothing and she opened her mouth silently for a moment before words actually came out. “You know what? I’m good, thanks. Ma’am. You go… reunite, David. I’m going to go drink; they better have a bar.” The last came out at a mutter that Max was sure at least David caught, too, considering his next words.

“Be careful!” he warned as she left. She waved curtly without turning around.

Lettie lived relatively close to the armory in the same kind of dark stone block everyone else had, and inside was not too different from what they had back at their place. It lacked a personal touch beyond the single family photo sitting in a plain grey frame on the counter. Shoved up against the wall behind a few apples, it clearly wasn’t something Lettie spent a lot of time looking at.

In it, a younger Lettie - she did have red hair, once - and very young Davey stood beside a tall, dour man scraped out of the imagination of Tim Burton and slapped into a Canadian mounted policeman’s uniform. It was very colorful compared to the gray, sallow nature of the man wearing it. Next to Davey was the biggest dog Max had seen in his life. Sitting, the mastiff was taller than young David and the boy couldn’t reach all the way around its neck in the picture, but he was grinning anyway as he tried, showing off several missing teeth and a split lip.

Efficiently, Lettie brought out ingredients and cooking utensils and lined them up on the counter.

“David take the center and instruct Max on the end,” she commanded, setting up towards one side with an open cookbook.

“Ma has a system,” David explained as he guided Max to the counter, “But the end is the easiest and I’ll talk you through it.” Before Max could even think about what that meant, David had crouched down to his level and put a hand on both shoulders. Anticipating some sort of unneeded pep talk, Max was taken aback when David just said with a half smile, “No bugs, please.” He patted his shoulders once and stood, moving to the center station Lettie had set up.

When Max caught up with what David was referencing, he snorted and poked the empty bowl in front of him. How hard could it be?

Lettie cleared her throat and began. The whole process was akin to an assembly line with Max left to do things like chop up the butter or count out cups of sugar. He’d been right in that it wasn’t difficult, but it did leave him constantly occupied until they’d finally portioned out the first batch on a metal sheet and deposited it into the oven. Unlike the freeform instruction at camp, this had been a whirlwind of precision and Max found himself a little dazed when he abruptly no longer had something to do.

“And we wait,” Lettie concluded, retrieving a beer from the fridge and popping it open as she sat at the nearby table. “Help yourself to drinks.”

“Where did you get beer?” David asked incredulously, reaching in and fishing out a bottle suspiciously.

“Well we can just get it from the vines, but these are traded goods,” Lettie tilted her own bottle, looking through the glass as she explained. “The vines’ stuff tastes metallic.”

“From the vines?” David echoed, popping his own bottle with a curious familiarity, but Max knew the answer to that question.

He rolled his eyes, “Yeah, _David_. The vines spew out anything people feed to them. It’s creepy as fuck.”

“Language,” Lettie and David said at the same time.

Damn, Max had been getting away with it for so long and one day with his mom had David backsliding. He’d just keep the conversation rolling away from it.

“Does anyone actually know how the vines ‘make’ food and drinks and stuff? ‘Cause we could be sitting on a f-reaking soylent green situation and not know it,” Max tapped one of the thick vines leading into the fridge curiously, but not hard enough to risk damaging it.

“If you really want to know, you could ask Carol,” Lettie suggested, taking another swig of beer. “She’s one of the teachers here, once you start school. She explained it to me but there was too much mumbo jumbo about loyalty and kindness and magic.”

As she said this, the vine Max was poking curled lightly around his fingers. Max shook it off gingerly and took a step back. “Weird,” he replied. “Kindness and sh- stuff doesn’t sound like how most magic works.”

She shrugged, unbothered by the discrepancy. “David, get the radio.”

When David just looked at her helplessly, she gestured to a shelf by the front door. “Situational awareness, soldier. You should be aware of threats at all times.”

David’s lips thinned and Max could imagine him complaining that radios usually weren’t a threat or that he really did have a good awareness of actual threats, but instead he put down his beer, stood stiffly, and retrieved the brick of a radio.

Gently gripping the end of a hanging vine, Lettie guided it to touch the radio. With the speed of a striking snake, it wrapped around the device, leaving the controls and small, hand-held microphone free. The radio buzzed to life and Lettie fiddled with the knobs until the signal was clear.

“Today in Standing, we’ve had an unseasonably balmy day, but we’ll pay for it in ice cold rainfall tonight!” Azira’s voice was as peppy as per usual as she enumerated the different precipitation levels in Standing and, evidently, the surrounding communities of Hartford and Grinder’s Den. Weather report done, she dove into the activity of some creatures called Grunt-Jumpers that had been sighted by Hartford. They seemed to resemble distorted toads the size of a fist and made of soggy leaves. They could literally leap into a person’s words if they hesitated or stuttered, controlling their voice for a few days until they tired of the joke and moved to the next victim. Hartford had an infestation, according to Azira.

“I didn’t know there were settlements nearby,” David spoke up leadingly.

“Non-human,” Lettie grunted. “And Grinder’s Den is not human-friendly at all. Hartford has a few humans, but they’re not exactly allowed out again. Better to visit than to try to live there. Max, turn it up.”

Max reached across the table to obey, but when his fingers touched the volume, the channel changed with a scratch of static through the air.

“-anyone hear me, we’re in serious shit here!”

Alarmed, Lettie stood up, grabbing the mic, “Posit and bearing for rescue, over.”

The panicked calls for help continued unabated. Young and terrified, the voice on the other side was more static than words as a result of their volume and pitch.

“Gosh darn it, this thing hasn’t worked properly in months and now it chooses to half-way function,” Lettie growled, smacking the microphone against her hand and trying again to no avail.

David stepped in, extending a hand, “Let me try.”

She favored him with a skeptical look but handed it over. David dropped into a crouch and held the microphone in front of Max, instructing him, “Ask them where they are, buddy.” When Lettie and Max looked ready to protest, David held up a hand, “Cellphones work for Max and the call came through when _he_ touched the radio. I’m pretty sure only kids can operate these things anymore.”

“Fine,” Max grabbed the mic with both hands and David flicked on the outgoing transmission. “Tell us where the fuck you are, fuckwit.”

“Over,” David added before he allowed incoming to come through again.

“Max?” squeaked the voice. Before anyone could reply, they hastily continued, “We’re in this forest with a shit-ton of mixed miniaturized plants and there’s a cliff shaped like a fucking chicken due north with a river to the southwest. We should be in fucking Ohio but from my GPS we’re in Montana and Texas so fuck us.” There was a pause, a crackle, then, “Over.”

“I know that cliff,” Lettie pulled a key from a pocket on her thick cargo pants and tossed it to David. “Ammo in the drawer next to the sink. Give me the .44 and the 9MM.” That being said, she grabbed a different key and opened the squat trunk hunched under the solitary window in the room. In it, a variety of black, heavy duty cases were stacked neatly. She opened one and assembled two different pistols with very little pause. “Tell them we’re on our way, Max, and ask what’s after them. David, do you want the Magnum or the Luger?”

“Sh-ugar cookies' sake,” David replied, hands up to ward off the firearms as Max set about obeying instructions, mimicking what he’d seen David do. “I’m still not a good shot, Ma. And I’d- rather not have access to a live gun.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, strapping on a set of shoulder holsters and holding out a hand impatiently just before David set the ammo she’d requested into it. Rifling around the bottom of her trunk she produced a blade, “Better? It’s a Glock Perfection.” She wiggled the knife as if this were supposed to be tempting. Max had watched a lot of TV and knew a lot of gun names, but that didn’t mean he understood fuck all she’d been talking about for the last half a minute. He’d thought Glocks were a gun, though.

“Fine,” David snatched the knife, sheath and all, and snapped it onto his belt.

“-big and snarly and got some kind of titanium alloy sticking out their fucking heads but they can still fucking _move_ and they’re circling at the bottom of this goddamn mother-shitting Sumameira tree which shouldn’t even _be here_ -” the voice was ranting on the other end of the connection in response to Max’s query regarding what sort of trouble they were in; he had a sneaking suspicion who this was. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but the technical language in the rant was pinging familiar in his head.

“Gearheads,” Lettie scowled. “They got too close to Grinder’s Den.”

“Oh good,” David sighed in resignation. He dropped a kiss on Max’s head and said, “Either wait here or go back to Gwen if you remember the way, but please don’t wander around.”

Max’s thoughts ground to a halt.

“Excuse me?” he demanded, abandoning the mic and whipping around with fire on his tongue. “I can go, too! Besides, I think that’s fucking Neil out there!”

“No. Max,” David’s voice was warning, dropping into cold. “This is life or death and there’s _no good reason_ for you to go, this time.”

“This time?” Lettie echoed incredulously but David just winced and seemingly changed the subject.

“Ma, do you have handhelds?” he asked a bit forcefully instead of addressing her concerns.

Despite this change in subject, she pointed to the end drawer and David retrieved two walkie-talkies even as she protested, “They don’t work, David.”

“Max can call us, probably,” David retorted, tossing her one that she instinctively caught. He eyed Max, “Which is a reason we need you _here_.”

Oh, that was rich. Max wanted to chuck the whole radio at his head. He shot back furiously, “You just made that up now; you were saying to go home a minute ago.”

“I hadn’t thought of it a minute ago,” David pointed out like that mattered. Face white with adrenaline, he crouched down to Max’s level again, taking his face in both hands before Max could think of dodging and scoring a direct hit with huge, puppy dog eyes and a tinge of fear. “Please, Max. Don’t follow us. You can help here.”

“Gross,” Max broke free, taking a step back towards the radio. He put a hand on the microphone, “Fine. Why would I want to go get eaten, anyway?”

“Thank you,” David breathed. He hesitated, but seemed to sense he’d reached Max’s limit for physical affection for the moment and stood, walking to the door. “I love you, Max. I’ll be back.”

Max flipped him off as the door closed behind them.

.

David wasn’t looking forward to fighting alongside his mother. Hopefully she’d take them down with a few shots and he’d be free and clear to mop up the civilian panic- ugh, the panicking kid and whoever he was with. Half a day with his ma and he was slipping into her terms again. They weren’t even actual army lingo as far as he knew. She just spoke like that and the army itself couldn’t change her.

“Gearheads,” she began didactically as they rushed out, “are freaking hard to kill. Depending on how many of them there are, I might be joining you in hand to hand; it’s just not worth it to waste that much ammo in one go. They usually need four or five shots each, unless you've just got one of them pinned.”

“Great,” David replied. “Since they have metal in their heads, I’m guessing a head wound won’t do anything?”

“You want to go for the throat,” she explained, miming the gesture even as they entered the treeline. Looking back at him, she said gravely, “They look a bit like humans, David. It’s clear they’re not - their eyes are wrong, for one, but it’s closer than a lot of the feral species. After watching you spar today, I’m sure you can hold your own, but can you handle this mentally? You can’t hesitate and I can probably grab back up from the armory.”

Fighting back an inappropriate laugh, David gave her a tight smile instead, “I’ve lived this long, Ma. I can handle it.”

She met his eyes for a long moment and nodded, “Okay.”

Getting a few updates from Max on the situation as they went, they made good time together. David had gotten used to running through varied terrain back at camp and had had no chance to lose the skill while on the run with Max and Gwen. As for Lettie, she could probably walk through a wall of concrete and brush herself off unharmed on the other side. ...Alright, maybe not a thick wall, but less than an inch? Sure.

Either way, he ducked, dodged and jumped over his obstacles and she mostly barreled past them.

“You’ve improved,” she praised, making David nearly muss up his timing. He narrowly avoided smacking himself in the face with a low-hanging pine branch. The mix of tropical and temperate trees was a trip on its own, regardless of the smaller, bonsai-like plants they kept needed to avoid below.

Dazed at the unprompted compliment, he replied politely anyway. “Thank you.”

Soon enough, they could hear swearing and shouting up ahead and David could speed up to match his mother instead of following a step behind her as she led.

“We’re there,” he told Max through the radio and got an annoyed affirmative in reply.

“I’ll tell them to start throwing shit,” he said before going radio silent despite David’s attempts to dissuade this course of action. His mother didn’t seem to mind.

“Don’t bother with stealth,” Lettie shouted at him as she bulldozed her way into the clearing up ahead. He had kind of gotten that memo from her running already. Humanoid figures were milling about under a large, tropical tree. Their limbs were too long and they hunched forward at an angle that would lead to life-long back pain in a human being. Very little hair could be seen anywhere on their persons and curls of metal that sometimes resembled gears looped seamlessly in and out of their skulls. They also didn’t turn to look at the sound, focused on the sticks raining down from above and the prey they had treed

“They’re very fast and they can’t hear!” His mother informed him before shooting one square in the back of the neck. It was a tiny target and she was barely in effective range for a handgun but she managed it. It whipped towards them with inhuman reflexes, bleeding from the through and through mess its throat had become. “But they can feel!”

It lurched towards them then, the others ignoring its plight and clawing at the trunk of the tree ineffectually. David intercepted viciously, his knife ripping through the remaining side of one half of its neck and it went down. He fought to keep from stomping on what was left of its throat to finish it off. The thing was clearly dying, twitching the way it was, and there was no need to be obvious in front of his mother.

“I’ll bring ‘em in; you take ‘em down,” his mother decided after he’d stepped away from it.

She wasn’t asking, but he nodded anyway to acknowledge that he’d heard.

With another shot, another Gearhead rocketed toward them. David dispatched it efficiently and the cycle began again. Every so often two would break off instead of one, but though they were fast, David found himself able to manage if he focused his first few hits on slowing them down instead of going for the kill.

Besides the wide, mercury silver eyes that didn’t have visible pupils or whites, they were fairly human.

But their expressions were dull.

Only a little disgusted with his own disappointment, David tried to focus on the fact that they did have bright, red blood that spattered with _force_ when he ripped through their skin. It was warm and familiar, if a bit thicker than a human’s would be. He had to routinely wipe it from his upper face so it wouldn’t get in his eyes, though.

When there was only one left intent on climbing the tree and actually having managed a few feet, David approached, yanking it off the trunk to the ground. He grabbed its arms easily as it went down, putting a foot on its back in one smooth motion to pin it down even as its arms were bent unnaturally backwards.

They really weren’t much of a challenge, compared to people. It was probably their numbers that usually brought down their prey, and only when they were all fixated on the right goal.

He glanced up at his mother, who wasn’t yet finishing this one off. She was probably worried about having a clear shot, but really, she could just walk over and shoot it point blank right now. In fact, she’d already approached, so he wasn’t sure what the issue was.

“Go ahead,” he prompted. “I’ve got a firm grip.”

Lettie raised the gun and fired right into the base of the skull. The Gearhead went immediately limp. Apparently that was the alternative to ripping three quarters of the throat away, but David could see why it wasn’t something one could easily do in the middle of a fight. She holstered her gun and looked up at David assessingly.

“What?” he asked when she didn’t say anything. He was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything wrong. Touching his face before he could stop himself, he knew he wasn’t grinning or anything. He’d been careful about that. Or he hoped he had. He wasn’t doing it now, anyway. There was some wet blood across his jaw, but he couldn’t have helped that in the moment. Hastily, he wiped it off anyway.

Maybe the Gearheads were preternaturally strong? David didn’t have a good handle on normal strength anymore. It was possible he shouldn’t have been able to just straight grapple one of them. But he was pretty sure she would have mentioned that on the way. She'd warned about their speed, after all.

“Thank fucking god, even if he doesn’t exist,” came a familiar voice as Neil hopped from the trunk of the huge tree to the ground, having shimmied down while they were talking. In surprise at the sight of his rescuers, the kid exclaimed, “David!”

“DAVID!” came a cry from above and David barely managed to get his arms up in time to catch Nikki as she dive-bombed him from the tree. Nikki’s mother was helping Neil’s father down the tree, as well. He could recognize the same curly brown hair Neil had on his father, even if the latter was balding significantly in center. Despite the glasses on his father, they had very similar, square faces as well. Nikki’s mother had the same mint green hair she had, proving it was somehow natural, but pulled back into a single braid and with a flattering layer of makeup applied to her face, despite the ongoing apocalypse. David was kind of impressed. He was also glad the kids hadn’t gotten separated from their parents when they left camp, but hadn’t quite expected the two different families to have stuck together as well. When Nikki’s mother exclaimed that they were saved and passionately kissed Neil’s father, he supposed that question was answered. Though the question of _why_ they were romantically entangled remained.

He should probably think about remembering their names.

“I can’t believe you’re still _alive_ after months of the world being awesome,” Nikki informed him excitedly, bouncing in his arms and flipping back so she could hang only from her legs before David grabbed her hastily and set her down, upright. She pouted at him. “C’mon. You’re my favorite jungle gym, David.”

“How about we focus on getting you guys safe first, huh?” David replied, unintentionally slipping into his counselor voice and smiling brightly at the two kids. “Max will be really happy to see you. Nurf and Dolph are in town, as well.” He glanced at their parents belatedly, “If you’re going to Standing, that is.”

“Is it a town?” Neil’s father asked weakly and David nodded. “A human town?”

“Mostly,” David agreed and the man blew out a sigh of relief.

“Yes,” he said emphatically, looking close to tears. “Yes, we’re going to Standing. Do you think they’ll want a philosopher?”

“Our school can always use another academic,” Lettie shrugged. “Who are you, then?”

“Oh right, I’m Carl Ledbetter,” Neil’s father introduced himself, holding out a hand that Lettie shook, followed by David.

“I’m Candy, Candy Schmidt,” Nikki’s mother said cheerfully. “Do you have electricity in Standing?”

“Basically,” Lettie confirmed.

“Praise Jesus, let’s go; I am suffering from serious Candy Crush withdrawal,” she explained, waving a hand forward. Seeing no reason to delay, Lettie started to head towards town, Candy right on her heels while Carl checked the kids.

“You two didn’t hurt yourself getting down, right?” he said, putting a hand on both kids’ heads which Neil shook off irritably. Nikki beamed up at him.

“I’m all good!” She extended her unblemished arms in front of her to prove it and Carl smiled back at her, glancing sadly at Neil and nodding.

“Well, I’m glad you’re both okay.” He clearly wanted to say more, but shook his head and dropped back to walk beside David, who was taking up the rear to sandwich the kids between adults. “You were one of their counselors, right?”

David looked up from where he’d been raising his walkie talkie to his mouth and paused, caught like a deer in the headlights, “Yeah. Uh, I’m just going to- one second.” He hit talk on the radio and said, quickly, “Everyone’s okay; we’re on our way back with Neil, Nikki, and their parents. Over.”

“Fucking A,” Max replied curtly.

That was going to be fun.

David put the radio away quietly and smiled at Carl, “Sorry about that. What did you need?”

Turns out, he just wanted to talk about Neil's time at camp and, surprisingly, Nikki's as well.

If it weren't for the ongoing world crises, it would have been a pretty normal conversation, but as it was... It was kind of an odd thing to focus on.

His tongue brushed the inside of his lips as he spoke, a hint of metallic blood lingering from the splashes he'd haphazardly wiped away.

David supposed they all needed a distraction every so often.


	7. Chaos Rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Tactically motivated self harm / a strategic ouchie; as well as later suffocation; there will be an XXX before each scene and after it; In That Order - both scenes are fairly short and there’s a little summary of the pertinent points worked in afterwards - let me know if it’s confusing for anyone skipping those!
> 
> This is 20 pages long; pace yourself lol

On the way back into Standing, Candy and Carl traded off carrying the children, belying Candy’s seeming disinterest from before. In fact, David could see that Candy was putting up a bit of a front when it came to her supposed callousness. Maybe it was because her behavior paralleled Max in some ways, but she seemed utterly transparent. She’d half-heartedly complain when Nikki asked to be picked up, but still pluck her off the ground and squeeze her tight. As Nikki rambled, Candy would listen intently but pretend to be looking at her phone. She could reply to any question Nikki asked of her immediately, making her attempt to seem disaffected horribly see through. 

Honestly, she was not half as good an actor as Max was when it came to feigning disinterest. Seeing for himself that the self-absorbed air from when Candy had picked up Nikki at camp was some kind of strange facade put David a bit more at ease with the woman. Sure, it was weird, but David didn’t exactly have the high ground in that category. Considering how kindly Carl seemed and how well Nikki and Neil got on, they looked like an ideal little family. 

Unfortunately, the first hiccup in processing the Ledbetter-Schmidt group was a big one.

David had, actually, expected it to go smoothly, so he’d been ready to leave once they’d found Killer still meandering about the town hall and deposited the incoming citizens into his hands. It was getting to be a bit late and he wanted to go check on Max since the stubborn kid wasn’t answering the radio anymore.

Unfortunately, after introducing himself, Killer had taken one look at Candy and asked, “Is that your natural or assumed form? For the records.”

David had thought he’d meant the green hair until Candy sheepishly shifted her weight and stretched into another nearly humanoid being that bore no resemblance to her previous form. They were maybe six feet tall with streamlined features that tilted forward and seemed designed for running fast and hard - like someone had taken all the functionality of a greyhound and poured it lovingly into a whip-thin human being. Dark amber not seen in the normal human range of brown suffused their body; it more closely mimicked the texture of cut amber than living skin, as well. Hair like shards of glass populated their head and shone rainbow-bright in even the dim light of the town hall.

“Mom! You got powers?” Nikki exclaimed, jumping up onto ‘Candy’ before anyone could stop her. They received the kid with grace, wrapping their long arms around her and propping her on a bony hip.

“I- well, not exactly, kid. Your mom…” They bounced slightly, unconsciously, as if trying to calm Nikki down before they even delivered the news. “There’s no good way to say this. Your mom left you guys two weeks ago and bumped into me that night. She agreed to let me use her face in exchange for some of my food and that gives me her memories, so I… I couldn’t just leave a kid on their own and Carl-” They turned to the terrified man, tipping their head apologetically, “I was going to slowly change my attitude so we could just be friends, and so Nikki could have a mom that gave a shit, but I had to do it all slowly, so… you wouldn’t see through me like Mr. Killer just did. Candy was… well, she was playing you, but you’re a very kind man and I wanted to change things gently.”

“I- I need to sit down,” Carl said faintly; Neil pointed him wordlessly at a bench. As for Nikki, she seemed a bit frozen. She hadn’t pushed away from ‘Candy’ yet, but she didn’t look all that accepting of the new information, either. If anything, it seemed Nikki couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what was happening, with the blank stare and pale face she didn’t make any move to hide.

“If you do have her memories, it checks out that she agreed to the use of her face and that would make you sort of next of kin. Plus, you transformed when asked, so you haven’t broken any taboos,” Killer was murmuring to himself as he scribbled hastily in his notebook, drawing up paperwork at lightning speeds. He glanced up, “We’ve had a case like this before, actually, so the framework is there. Can you prove her memories are yours?”

“Nikki, sweetie, do you remember when you were younger and you set off a whole box of firecrackers in the kitchen?” ‘Candy’ prompted softly, craning their too long neck slightly to meet Nikki’s eyes. Nikki stared into the swirling, gold and black constellations of their eyes for a long moment before her own welled with tears.

“So wait, you’ve been here two weeks? When Mom told me she was proud I was doing so good, that was you?” she asked, words coming out in a trembling waterfall. Once she started, it was hard to stop the flow, “And when she started singing me lullabies again and picked me up and carried me when I was tired and asked me if I was hungry, that was you, too? Not Mom?” Her fingers curled tightly on their arms. “...Mommy left me?”

Eyes swirling with reflected hurt, ‘Candy’ winced, the confirmation coming in a low, soft apology, “I’m so sorry, Nikki.”

Nikki held her gaze, then looked down at Killer and said in a small voice, “I remember the firecrackers.” She turned away then, wrapping her arms around ‘Candy’ as her shoulders shook in a silent sob. They put a long-fingered hand on her back and swayed. The scene was surreal, but no one moved to interrupt.

A hand over his mouth, David fought back tears that were a mixture of sympathy and exhaustion. On the one hand, he truly felt for Nikki, but on the other… He hadn’t noticed anything off about Candy at all. Or… he’d noticed something, but not that they weren’t _human_. Was this something else he’d need to look out for from now on? He was already so goddamn tired, but Killer seemed to identify her right off the bat.

Tomorrow. He’d hunt him down and ask about it tomorrow.

Leaning against a pillar nearby, Lettie grunted in vague surprise, “I thought you all knew. Guess you live, you learn.”

...Or he’d ask his mother tonight. This was probably something he’d be trained on and he found himself reluctantly looking forward to it. Even if it did put him back under his mother’s thumb.

“I apologize that this was… unexpected,” Killer scratched through a few things in his notebook and looked up with a placating half-smile. “I’ll assume you’re going to be in two different houses for now and I would like to do an interview with Nikki before placing her.”

“That’s understandable,” said ‘Candy.’

“Did Candy give you her name as well?” At the affirmative from the shapeshifter, Killer flipped a page and made another note. He hummed to himself and added, “Ms. Lettie, David, thank you for your time. I’d like to grant our new friends _some_ privacy to go over their information and living requirements.”

“Sure. Come on, David,” Lettie agreed before David could say anything. He’d rather not leave Nikki here alone, but… Regardless of species, the shapeshifter did seem to care for her and he doubted Killer would subject them to _less_ scrutiny than he’d given David and Max. ...Right? Well, Nikki wasn’t one to lie, either. She might be a bit gullible, but her tendency to parrot others at their worst and bring up whatever came to mind made her very difficult to lead. It was unlikely the shapeshifter would be able to lead her into saying anything other than the truth. Or eventually the truth. Nikki did sometimes need prompting to stay on topic.

Plus, though Carl was there mainly for Neil, he did seem to care about Nikki, as well. And she… wasn’t his responsibility anymore. It stung to be reminded of that, but it was something he needed to remember. He hadn’t seen any of the campers for a few months, after all. They weren’t _his_.

Killer prompted him with raised eyebrows when David found himself lingering by the door. He darted a glance at Nikki, who was still clinging to ‘Candy,’ but no longer sobbing.

“I’ll- I’ll be here,” Carl said weakly, having looked up at the long pause and noticed David on the threshold. He smiled faintly at David, looking a bit sick. “Nikki and Neil will be okay.”

Well. They had damn well better be. David had already relieved one set of unworthy parents of their responsibility.

Finally, he forced himself to step outside into the cool night air. Max was still radio silent; that needed checking and the only way to do that was to physically go find him. He expected to have to run to catch up with Lettie, but she hadn’t made it more than halfway down the block. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was waiting for him.

“So,” David began leadingly as he jogged up to her, falling a half step behind his mother by habit. “What was that?”

“Shapeshifter; they call themselves the Mercurials. They can only transform into people who’ve agreed to let them and they don’t have individual names unless they’re given one freely.” She shrugged, “They’re basically walking paper in terms of their physical strength, though. Plus, their biggest taboo is to not transform into their natural form when asked about it. They’re harmless, if sneaky.”

That didn’t really sound harmless, but David could see where she was coming from. On the other hand, if Max ever ran off and left a shapeshifter _with_ his memories behind… A cold chill stabbed icicles into his stomach at the very thought and David hastened to ask, “But how can you tell? How did you realize Candy wasn’t human?”

“Eyes,” Lettie pointed at her own promptly. “That swirly thing they have in their natural form is always there, but it’s deep in the pupils when they’re looking human. Kind of like iron shavings shifting around in the dark. Creepy as heck but easy to see if you’re looking for it.”

“Iron shavings,” David repeated, trying to drive the point home for himself. “Right, okay.”

“You probably won’t get it right away,” Lettie dismissed as they walked up to her home. Which- okay, fair enough. David wasn’t usually a quick learner, but he’d gotten to be faster with life or death subjects. Plus, this involved Max’s safety. David wasn’t going to forget it any time soon. In fact…

Max had evidently decided not to go back home, yet, though David had been worried he’d run off, given how annoyed the boy had seemed. The reason for this appeared to be the cookies. Lettie’s egg timer had gone off while they were gone and Max had maneuvered the cookie sheet out of the vine-encrusted oven, leaving it haphazardly balanced on the edge of the stovetop.

David grabbed a pot holder and pushed it further onto the stove, “You remembered to use these, right?”

A raised eyebrow from Lettie was ignored until she realized he was addressing Max, who held up his unmarked hands, downturned mouth full of cookie, as proof. Crumbs littered the table that David scooped up and threw away before he came to an unconscious parade rest across from Max. He didn’t reach out, but he did look somewhat intently into Max’s half-glare and feel some tension in his chest unravel when his eyes were full of only human rage. While Max may have been somewhat placated by the cookies before David walked in, that was wearing off hard now that he could look at the source of his displeasure. They needed to talk and Lettie would only interrupt if they did it here.

“Ready to go home, kiddo?” David prompted, arms going behind his back so he didn’t just pick him up and leave. Max probably wasn’t bothered by Lettie, but David was… fully caught up with his mother. No need to linger in her home.

To his surprise, Max glanced at Lettie before hopping down from the chair and depositing his plate next to the sink with a curt, “Bye.”

Max, for his part, acted as if he’d done nothing out of the ordinary and strode toward the door, leaving David to hastily make his goodbyes, thank Lettie for the cookies in Max’s stead, and follow. It seemed Max was as ready to leave as David was.

There wasn’t anything about Lettie, per say, that bothered Max, but he didn’t really like the way David acted around her. So if they were going to talk as David’s tense silence promised, Max would prefer not to be in Lettie’s house for it. The sun had vanished sometime during the whole disaster with Nikki and Neil, so little glowing veins on the vines lit the streets in a pale blue glow. Max wasn’t sure what the channels were actually called, but veins were close enough, considering what they looked like. David probably knew.

He wasn’t planning on asking, though. The counselor was stiff as a board as they walked back home. That meant either that he was going to give Max a lecture - although Max hadn’t done anything wrong! - or that he was freaking out about something.

Max would bet on a bit of both. Even if he hadn’t actually done anything aside from stop talking, David sometimes had strange ideas about what was alright or not. For example, Max wasn’t allowed to use a knife unsupervised but he still had to carry a pocketknife ‘just in case.’ Hands slipping into his hoodie pockets, he could feel the smooth resin of the outer casing of it now. Sure, David had said it was for survival purposes if he got separated, but if Max could be trusted in an emergency, shouldn’t he be trusted all the time?

He had a funny feeling that that exact distinction was what they were going to argue about now. There wasn’t any putting it off, since the walk ended at their door.

Max kicked a pebble off the street and between two clumps of vine stalks where they connected to the ground before trudging inside under David’s arm, still extended to hold the front door open for him. Then the door was shut and they were alone in the sitting room-kitchen combo that made up the front half of the house. Gwen was either holed up in her room or still out drinking. Max would bet on the former; Quartermaster used to call Gwen a lightweight.

“I’m not going to bring you into fights that I don’t have to,” David said immediately once the door was shut, his voice strangely soft for a statement so full of iron. His hands were out and open, a huge difference from the way he’d kept his arms locked to his side or behind his back with his mother around. “Max, everything that happened at camp was… because there were no other choices I could see at the time. In hindsight, there were a lot of bad decisions made because it felt like we were running out of time and… well, what I’m trying to say is-”

“You don’t really trust me to handle myself in a fucking fight, even though I’ve been fine the whole time we were traveling _and_ seeing the shit you were up to at camp,” Max interjected from where he stood on the other side of the room. Eyes narrow and hands firmly curled in his pockets, he didn’t move an inch to bridge the gap between them, even if he did want to shout into David’s face. That fucker would probably take it as an invitation to reach out and Max was _not_ going to let this be hugged away or whatever. “I’m not a little kid, David! You can’t just leave me behind when shit hits the fan!”

Running a hand over his face, David crouched down to Max’s level despite the space between them. Leaving his hand over his mouth for a moment, David’s eyes searched Max’s unreadably, sending a thrill of tension up Max’s spine at the unknown expression.

“What?” he demanded, trying to get David talking again. There was something about David’s quiet moments in an argument that made his hair stand on end. Seeing as it usually preceded some new bullshit David pulled out of his ass, the feeling might have some merit.

Finally, David’s hand dropped from his face and he asked, “Why do you want to come with me?”

Max opened his mouth to give the obvious answer and stumbled over the nothing that exited. His mouth snapped shut, twisting into a scowl. Saying that he wasn’t a kid, or that David didn’t need to protect him - those things were true but they didn’t answer the question.

Why did he want to go?

Perhaps seeing Max’s struggle on his face, David shifted his weight and sat fully on the floor instead of hovering in a squat. He crossed his legs and sat forward, arms resting on his knees as he rephrased, “What do you think will happen if you’re not there?”

That was actually easier to explain and Max jumped into it hastily before David could decide Max’s opinion didn’t exist. “You’re fucking oblivious sometimes, David; you’ll miss something and piss off a tree god or get ganked or something without me.”

David jolted, as if anything Max had said had been surprising. His eyes began to well up a little as the words fully registered and while Max was glad he seemed to be really internalizing this lesson, he hadn’t… meant to make him cry about it. Not that it was hard, sometimes, but Max had been pretty sure David had already accepted his own shortcomings in this area. It really hadn’t been an insult. Not one he’d intended to hurt, anyway. Why the hell was David so sensitive? He nearly started to walk it back, say it a little differently, when David finally cleared his throat.

“Max,” David extended a hand and pulled it back, changing his mind and dropping the hand uselessly into his lap. His eyes still shone suspiciously bright as he said, “It’s not your job to protect me.”

“What,” Max’s voice dropped stone cold, his interpretation of David’s tears tripping over itself and falling flat in his mind as his shoulders curved in at the sudden attack. He didn’t have the time to pick apart what had gone wrong in David’s brain to pull that rabbit out of the hat. Instead, to drive the point home, he explained clearly, “I’m not protecting you.”

“You- ...sure,” David replied carefully, choosing his words with conscious effort as he wiped away tears that hadn’t yet fallen and slowly continued. “What I mean is, I have fought plenty of times without you there and been fine. You’re always helpful, Max, but I _am_ stronger than most people and I’m good at… fighting. There’s no need to risk your life out there.”

“Is there really a fucking need for you to do it now, either? Why do you think you can go risk your life but I can’t do the same?” Max shot back. “I’m smarter than you and I’m better at understanding magic! I get that I have to go to fucking school next week because that’s what they do here and I’ll watch out for Carol, but I haven’t changed just because we’re in a town now! Why won’t you just fucking admit that I’m not some snot-nosed shit you have to run after and let me help?”

David’s brow had furrowed and his hands tightened on his knees as Max’s rant went on. When the kid spat his last question, he leaned forward and fiercely stated, “Because you _are_ my kid. A kid,” he corrected with some force when Max’s eyes went wide and David realized the blow he’d accidentally struck. He wasn’t sure _why_ Max reacted that way, considering that he’d nearly been adopted and had already been voluntarily kidnapped as the alternative. But Max’s love-hate relationship with acknowledging David’s attachment to him wasn’t a priority right this second. Continuing emphatically, David reiterated, “You are _a_ kid. I know things got… confusing. Our relationship is not exactly normal. But,” he hastened to add when Max only went paler at the reminder that not all was well in their dynamic, “that doesn’t mean it can’t get better. I do depend on you, Max. More than I should.” It was a little heart-breaking to see Max settle back, color returning at the admission of that fault. “But I would… appreciate it if we could work on... “

How to phrase it so Max didn’t escape in the middle of the night to go prove himself by picking a fight with something that would kill him?

David took a breath and started again, resigning himself to trading one flaw for another. He would have to make it _his_ problem if he wanted Max to listen, so he decided on something that was technically true, explaining reluctantly, “You know I’m… not following my usual habits. And you know that makes me a bit tense. So it’d help _me_ out if I could _know_ you were safe, to keep _my_ stress levels… manageable.”

Contemplatively, Max turned this over, the scowl fading from his face, and David learned it was possible to hate himself more than he already did. If he were smarter, he could think of some other way to convince Max not to follow him into battle. If he had _noticed-_ tried harder, earlier, maybe he wouldn’t be facing down the mess he’d made of their dynamic and worrying what it might be doing to Max. Heck, Max might even value his own damn life enough to not argue for risking it needlessly. If he’d just… been better, the whole series of disasters at camp might have been averted. After all, Quartermaster had known so much more than he could have guessed for years. If he’d only asked… Maybe it could have ended years ago and David wouldn’t be how he is now.

“Shit, David, why didn’t you just say?” Max said in a tone that revealed he was _relieved_ it was about David’s tendencies rather than his being a child who shouldn’t have to fight any eldritch monstrosity bigger than the glowing ladybugs that occasionally flitted around. His hands slid out of his pockets, his shoulders dipped down and back; he looked almost like a different kid.

It was the trust, David assumed. It wasn’t a healthy way to expect it, but Max seemed to have formed a connection between David telling him horrible things and the level of trust David had in him. A feeling which was entirely David’s fault, considering his actions had led to this. It would be great if he knew how to fix it but all he really knew for certain with Max was that he wanted to wrap the kid in bubble wrap and hug him close until he was old enough to fight his own battles. At like twenty-five. Or thirty. Or fifty two.

Of course, that wasn’t practical. Even if the world hadn’t been magically altered, David was still… struggling with his own problems. He’d need to isolate himself from time to time to keep everything under control.

“You know, maybe you should go hunting,” Max stated, casually giving him a heart attack before he came out of his own thoughts and realized the kid meant _animals_. He was in full problem-solving mode, argument utterly forgotten as he plotted how to assuage his guardian’s bloodlust with all the weight of writing up a grocery list. Max had gotten more comfortable with David’s flaws than David was, perhaps because he didn’t have to personally feel the depths of them. “I’m betting that’s why you joined the guard and kudos on picking the most violent job but like… I don’t think you’re going to be killing shit every shift so you might wanna go out and… pick your own?”

“Good idea,” David lied with some resignation, standing and dusting off his pants to try to keep it from showing in his voice. He clapped his hands together, declaring, “I think it’s past your bedtime, though, so why don’t we put a pin in the brainstorming session and call it a night?”

He wasn’t planning to admit that it just wasn’t the same. Not to anyone, but _especially_ not to Max. No need to throw fuel on that fire. Oh god, David seriously needed to find a better way to address Max’s insecurities.

And he would prefer it if he could do this particular errand alone.

“David, I think making sure you don’t go on a spree is more important than staying up late,” Max complained, but moved towards his room anyway. He pointed at David commandingly, “Go hunting or something.”

“Okay, maybe tomorrow,” David nodded placatingly, finally dropping his hands on Max’s shoulders and turning him towards the bathroom. “Brush your teeth first.”

Max shot him a face but meandered into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Time to check on Gwen. David knocked on her door and got a muffled reply that sounded vaguely affirmative, so he opened it. She was sprawled face down on her bed, one arm bent up so her hand dangled over her head with the other shielding her face from the world as the snake coiled in a neat pile in the small of her back. David took a step forward and somewhere in the room, hidden from sight, the platypus hissed.

He sighed and stayed where he was.

“Gwen? Did you have a nice time out?” he prompted, craning his neck to see what state she was in. Her hair had been taken down and her shoes were off, meaning she hadn’t gotten plastered before dropping into bed.

“The mayor hit on me,” she grumbled into her pillow. “She’s pretty and I didn’t drink because I knew I’d slosh it down my front if I tried to pick up my glass and I bet she thinks I’m a total screw up now.”

“Oh, uh…” David glanced around the room and tried again to take a step inside, this time more obviously angled towards the bed. The platypus remained ominously silent. Gingerly, he navigated the small piles of clothing and half-unpacked bags before sitting lightly beside Gwen and patting her shoulder, “I’m sure she doesn’t think that.”

“I _told her_ about my _degrees_ ,” Gwen moaned. “She said something about the buildings in town and I just _rambled_ about rocks and then why I knew about rocks and all the minors and majors just came spilling out of me. It’s so obvious I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and she’s just, like, sitting there, smiling at me so I couldn’t think. She probably wanted to run.”

David hadn’t known Gwen had multiple degrees other than the many minors, but his ongoing revelations about Gwen’s college life weren’t the point of this conversation.

“I think if she was sitting and smiling at you, she might have been enjoying your talk,” he pointed out, adding another pat to Gwen’s back when she buried her face deeper into her pillow and groaned. He clearly wasn’t helping here. “Anyway,” he interjected hastily to divert the conversation before it could delve any deeper into subjects he wasn’t great at addressing. “If you’re sober, I’d like to leave Max with you once he’s in bed. I need to have a chat with one of his teachers.”

She paused, face still in the pillow, and emerged enough to roll an eye up at him suspiciously through the curtain of hair loosed from its usual ponytail, “In the middle of the night?”

“I’ve had Max with me up until now,” David explained without explaining and she stared at him a little harder.

“You’re not going to-”

“I’m not going to kill her,” David confirmed before she could finish the sentence. After all, it was entirely possible she hadn’t intentionally done anything to Max. It could have been some outside force that made her illusion go off. That’s why he needed to plan out how to get to her and talk. Alone, given how Sarah and Killer had acted when he’d come to pick up Max. David was relatively confident she would be in the ‘hospital’ that Don had pointed out to him during their conversation yesterday.

Gwen narrowed her eyes, but gave it up quickly, huffing and shoving her face into her pillow. She made a series of muffled noises and the snake on her back translated, “She says she’ll be here for Max if you have to leave.”

“Thank you,” David said with one final pat to Gwen’s shoulder as he stood. He navigated the floor again, carefully avoiding anything that could be a buried platypus on the way out. Probably he should… tell Max where he was going if he wanted to keep shoring up the banks there. Even if he, again, wouldn’t be taking Max. Hopefully the idea that Carol might try to attack specifically him might keep Max from looping back into the same argument all over again.

Then again, it didn’t work very well with the attackers back at camp.

Max was texting in bed when he checked on him next, his phone vibrating with incoming messages and his thumbs restless as he tried to keep up. It wasn’t actually very hard to let him know David was going to visit the hospital while Max was distracted by whatever was happening on the phone. He only had to weather a single glare and the accusation that that wasn’t what Max had meant by hunting before he was able to explain. Distracted by his buzzing phone, Max had agreed to stay put on the condition that no one die. Easy enough. While it was a little disconcerting to be warned against something he probably wasn’t going to do by more than one person in a row, he felt the benefits of the focus shift were worth some discomfort. After all, they were more concerned with David toeing that line rather than figuring out the logistics of what he was doing.

It would be a talk, of course, eventually; he was fairly certain the hospital likely wasn’t about to let him in to visit this late at night, though. They may be a shadow of the bureaucratic nightmare American hospitals might have been, but the small size of this one could work against him, especially if they only had a single entry way. He couldn’t count on fire safety standards forcing the existence of a fire exit. Grudgingly, David fell back on lessons his mother had taught him when they moved to Ville-Marie in Montreal. Since they’d lived out in the country before then, she had focused on woodland survival until they moved to the city. It had been a happier time.

He shook his head and sunk back into planning.

First, consider the situation.

It was raining, as Azira had predicted, but that lowered outside visibility for everyone, not just David, and he was suitably protected by the grey-green raincoat he’d unburied from the bottom of his pack before heading out. He needed to evade notice long enough to find Carol or her room and that would, inevitably, take him inside. There was unlikely to be more than one medic in the building, given the relatively low population of the town and the fact that it had been built from the ground up out of survivors. The hospital layout would be a mystery considering their own house had different dimensions on the inside than the outside, as Gwen had already confirmed. So this first visit would likely be purely information gathering. He’d seen windows, though they were covered with dingy curtains. He could probably sneak a peek inside, but that wasn’t ideal. There weren’t many options he could pull off himself without blueprints, aviation, or the internet. Unless…

Well, he _was_ trying to get into a hospital.

Finding a dimly lit alley with no windows wasn’t too hard. There wasn’t a great deal of human security within the town and the town itself was set up poorly for any extended siege. Maybe due to the confidence they had in their supernatural allies. Either way, it worked in David’s favor. He slid his knife from his belt and weighed it consideringly in his hand as he examined the edge. He wasn’t a _fan_ of pain and infection could be a real doozy, but with the vines? His ma and Max had both said the vines could make anything they were fed. If they had a lick of sense between them, the councilmembers would have made sure that included antibiotics.

XXX

Before he could talk himself out of it, David threw the knife up into the air and caught it with his non-dominant hand, intentionally fumbling the catch and squeezing the blade. Fat red drops of blood slid over the metal and in the back of his mind he was somewhat relieved to find he didn’t have quite the same reaction to his own blood as he did most others’.

Despite the fact that he’d anticipated the wound, he still cringed at the sharp pain with an instinctive, “Ouchie.”

XXX

Now that he had a reason well _in hand -_ he laughed quietly at the joke even if no one was there to hear it - David meandered towards the hospital, holding his palm with his other hand as he went. There were places he could have picked that would have been more convenient, but David wanted this to merit a nighttime hospital visit. A large slice across the palm could actually be deadly - for other people.

David had noticed his skin was a little… thicker than it had been.

With antibiotics, he had a hunch this would clear up more quickly than one would normally expect. Shaking the uneasy thought, David stepped openly through the front doors of the hospital and bee-lined for the hobbled together reception desk. No one was at it, but there was only a series of curtains between the front and the rest of the hospital. From what he could see through the curiously grey sheets, the inside was set up much like a field medic’s tent, with a bit more stability. Cots lined the inner room, with rolling dividers blocking off occupied beds. Oddly, the floor here wasn’t the black stone streaked with bits of grey that made up most of the buildings of Standing. Instead, smooth grey cobblestone was perfectly fitted for the hospital floor with barely a bump. Some wooden doors stood along the far wall and he could hear someone moving around back there, perhaps setting down a dish.

Perfect.

Graciously granting himself permission, David ducked past the first layer of curtains and strolled towards the back, rolling down his wet sleeve to better expose his wound and holding the injured hand a bit closer to his chest.

“Hello?” he called, scanning the dim room as he passed each semi-obscured bed. “Anyone here tonight?”

There. A flash of yellow hair between the curtains. Max had described Carol as _Big Bird blonde_ , and later downgraded to _yellow with feathers._ There were only three occupied beds and since all the cots were lined up against the outside walls, windows sat innocently between each one. He took a quick count of which windows she was between on the east side and plastered a smile back onto his face as the door opened.

“Wow,” said the very short, very tired person that was eyeing the blood dripping down his arm. They moved a hand to their chest pocket and paused, eyes sliding suspiciously over to another of the three occupied beds before they dropped the hand to their side with a sigh. There was a cigarette box sticking just out the top of the targeted pocket on their well-worn lab coat. “What did you do?”

Their curly black hair was cropped close with sharp, square corners atop their head, and the bags beneath their eyes were looking permanent. A somewhat recent impact scar broke up their wide, flat nose with streaks of scar tissue but they appeared otherwise unscathed by the apocalypse. They snapped on plastic gloves as they approached, holding out a hand and demanding before David could answer the first question, “Arm.”

“I lost a bet,” David finally got to reply cheerfully, obeying the command and allowing the stranger to examine his bloodied hand without hesitation, raincoat leaving little puddles on the floor. “It turns out I cannot juggle and that knives were not the best thing to prove that with.”

“No, really?” The presumed doctor drawled, pulling a cut apart slightly and tsking under their breath. They glanced up as David obligingly made a noise of discomfort at the movement and released him, heading for a metal cabinet and digging out supplies. As they prepared, they asked casually, “If that’s your idea of a good bet, why haven’t I seen you in here before?”

“I’m new in town,” David supplied easily, grin returning. “I’m sure I’ll see you more often from now on!”

“Charming,” they muttered, dumping what they needed on an unoccupied cart and directing David to sit on one of the beds. Not one anywhere near Carol, but that wasn’t a problem just yet. Unexpectedly, the sheets were cool, thin plastic not unlike a cheap rain poncho despite their visual similarity to dingy cloth. “Who are you?”

“David, and it’s lovely to meet you!”

“Well, David, I’m Dr. Stone,” was the dispassionate reply. A digital thermometer appeared before David without warning or explanation. The doctor held it impatiently in front of him until David confusedly opened his mouth. It was popped under his tongue with directions not to open his mouth until Dr. Stone said so. That… didn’t really seem like something that needed doing just this second.

Dr. Stone took David’s hand back and washed the blood away with a wet cloth that they chucked into a laundry bin labeled with a hand-drawn biohazard symbol. Following this was a topical antibiotic cream, two small stitches for the cut into the base of his thumb, and wrappings. Dr. Stone did not remove the thermometer until they were absolutely done with everything else.

David was starting to get the sneaking suspicion Dr. Stone just preferred silent patients. Given that the doctor almost didn’t check the thermometer before they put it away, David felt his suspicion had been confirmed. However, Dr. Stone snuck a not so furtive glance at him when they made that mistake and made a show of pulling out a clipboard and looking at the temperature, pen in hand.

And paused.

They looked up at David and asked, bluntly, “Human?”

“Yes?” David answered reflexively.

“You’re low,” Dr. Stone frowned, reaching out and putting their other hand on David’s forehead. “I guess I can feel it. Are you feeling any drowsiness? Numbness?” Their hand dipped to David’s throat, feeling for his pulse. “Huh.”

David didn’t think speaking while the doctor was trying to take his pulse for some reason would work out well, so he waited in mounting confusion until Dr. Stone took their hand away and pulled out a cigarette. They held it, unlit, for a few moments while examining David like a misshapen puzzle piece before putting it away with another sigh.

“How long have you been bleeding?” they asked suddenly, pulling out their clipboard and clicking their pen open. “And answer my damn questions.”

“Uh, well, no drowsiness or numbness,” David listed off, a slight dropping in his stomach telling him he may have stepped into something from which he couldn’t easily back out. “I’ve been bleeding just a few minutes? Standing isn’t that big and I came straight here.”

This had just been to get the layout of the hospital. Now he was thinking he should have risked sneaking in without it. Whatever Dr. Stone had noticed, it wasn’t something that was causing a problem just yet and David wasn’t super willing to deal with it. He had other things to focus on.

“You know what, thank you very much,” David started to stand, holding his hands out apologetically. “But I think I’m good now? All bandaged up and ready to go!”

Dr. Stone snapped their clipboard down on the metal cart nearby with a clattering clank. They turned bloodshot eyes on David and pointed imperiously to the bed, “You may be suffering from hypothermia and anemia, _David_. Sit. Down.”

“I just have a low temperature,” David tried again, edging slightly further down the hall.

“88 degrees is not a ‘low temperature,’” Dr. Stone made sharp air quotes around the repetition. “You shouldn’t even be walking around.”

Laughing nervously, David took another step away, “Wow, that thermometer must be way off, then!”

“Yeah, no,” Dr. Stone replied flatly, raising a hand palm side up and curling their fingers into a claw. Like a bubbling froth of stone, the floor began to move. It rose beneath David as he reflexively tried to break into a sprint and knocked him off his feet. Stones rose and fell constantly beneath him, only lightly pummeling him as it deposited him back onto the bed in a motion not dissimilar to crowd surfing. Dr. Stone knocked lightly on his head, “I don’t let people who should be dying walk out of my hospital. I’m a doctor.”

That didn’t explain anything and was, honestly, not a doctor’s actual job description. Before David could open his mouth to deliver any of this information, Dr. Stone put down their clipboard and pointed accusingly into David’s face, “You know you’ve got symptoms of something and you’re ignoring it. I’ll bet that means you either _aren’t_ human or…” They gestured again and the floor rippled, settling back into something perfectly smooth again but free of the stone dust and dirt that had sprayed free with their movement. “You got hit with one of those green things during the Change, didn’t you?”

David wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. The ‘green things’ could only be referring to the formless seal creatures that had escaped the seal when it was reset with Daniel’s sacrifice. He hadn’t heard it referred to as the Change before either, even if it was fitting.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Stone said in a somewhat calmer tone, dropping their hands and giving David a bit more space. “It’s happened to more than a few of my patients and… well, obviously, myself.”

“Yes,” David agreed once this confession registered. Sure, he didn’t want to explore his symptoms but here was a handy excuse for them. “Yes, that’s- that’s exactly it. I didn’t know anyone else had- um- had that happen to them. I’m… fine not knowing what’s changed.”

Dr. Stone tilted their head slightly, the heat returning to their eyes and voice sliding out at a dangerous low. “You might have special dietary requirements.”

“Um,” David said, pulling a foot up onto the bed as Dr. Stone leaned in.  
“Your core temperature is clearly altered,” they continued, voice growing more strident.

“Dr. Stone,” David tried again, ineffectually putting his hands up in the limited space between them.

“Your bone structure is _obviously_ changing; you _need to know_ what’s happening in your own body or you won’t know what’s healthy and what’s a sign of distress! David -” They stopped themself and grabbed David’s shoulders, demanding, “What is your last name and what are your pronouns?”

“Adelard,” David heard himself say. “Uh, him?”

“Good. You can call me Ajani, using they/them, by the way. Nice to meet you in full. - David Adelard!” Dr. Stone dove back into the rampage as if they’d never paused for social niceties, trying and failing to lightly shake David, instead moving only themself. “You can’t ignore your entire body changing just because it scares you! You have to take care of yourself! As a doctor, I cannot let you leave until we’ve established a baseline and made sure you’re not suffering ill effects!”

“That is not what a doctor is supposed to do,” David replied faintly, but his protest regarding the lack of free will involved in this situation withered and burned in the fire of Dr. Stone’s ongoing speech. As he watched the doctor pontificate, working themself up into greater and greater passion, he did find himself oddly reminded of Preston. Perhaps they had considered a theater major at some point. The soliloquy was well-paced and became more eloquent as time went on. Applause would have been ill-fitting for the situation, but that was the only reason David held back when they’d finished.

The testing, on the other hand, was much less elegant. Personal and a little invasive, Dr. Stone essentially ran over David’s physiology with a fine toothed comb. It wasn’t information David was entirely comfortable sharing, but at least there seemed to be some sort of sound blocking quality to the rolling dividers that would keep the three other occupants of the room oblivious. For one thing, they hadn’t woken at any point during Dr. Stone’s kidnapping of David or their subsequent speech. For another, David couldn’t hear any of them breathing. 

Since he was fairly certain from the dubiously voluntary examination that Dr. Stone was earnestly passionate about their patients’ health, he didn’t think it was likely the sleeping patients had all passed away unnoticed at once or been helped to the other side. That left sound containment. Dr. Stone had confirmed it when he asked but hand-waved through an explanation that essentially just left him more confused than when he’d been originally.

Eventually, the interrogative examination ended, leaving Dr. Stone leafing through their notes with a smug expression.

“Your metabolism has slowed down,” they explained with a triumphant tilt to their tone, smacking the back of their fingers lightly against their notes as if to prove it. “So you’ll need to eat less if you don’t want to get sick. Or rather, I believe your digestion has become more efficient, considering what we spoke about with your bowel movements-”

“Yes, I remember,” David interrupted, not wanting to relive that embarrassment.

“Well, I’m fairly certain you could live off bark and leaves now, if you really wanted to,” Dr. Stone concluded happily. “Your temperature doesn’t seem to be bothering you, and your pulse is ridiculously slow, but I don’t think you need to worry about it. Your body is much denser than it appears, but given your reflexes and your strength, I doubt it’s a problem. All in all, you seem to be in good health, for a given type of good health, and we’ve established a baseline we can use in the future if you should ever need a point of comparison.”

“Okay,” David agreed weakly. He didn’t really want to go into it, but at least now he knew? No, he’d been fine not knowing and he still didn’t really know _why_ this was happening, since none of the creatures had actually touched them. This ongoing desire to ignore the weirdness appeared to be an apprehension he shared with Max, but now that Dr. Stone had been proven right about certain changes to his lifestyle being needed for his ongoing health… 

Well, he was thinking he was going to drag Max in for a check up. Although Max hadn’t shown any signs of the kinds of changes David was going through, his mimicry was sometimes… physically impossible, which did imply things about his vocal cords and lungs, at least. Lungs were really important and Dr. Stone’s impassioned speech had hit some key points about health David couldn’t rightfully ignore. 

“I… have a son, um- adopted. But we were together during the Change and we both- uh- both got hit. We’re keeping it… You know, kind of secret because…” He waved a hand and hoped Dr. Stone would fill in their own blanks. Since they nodded, David was pretty sure they had. “So can I- do I make an appointment or…?”

“I work nights,” Dr. Stone said immediately, opening a separate datebook and flipping to the current week. “But I can take over Friday evening if you want to bring him by after school.”

That was two days from now. David could totally convince Max to get a check up in two days. He nodded, “Okay. Thank you, Dr. Stone.”

“Seriously, you can call me Anaji at this point,” Dr. Stone reiterated from a previous point in the interrogation. They brought out a cigarette and considered it. “We’re in the same boat.”

It would probably be good to start getting more people on his side, considering Killer had it out for him for some reason. The _shapeshifter_ impersonating Nikki’s mother had had a better welcome. David could only assume he’d given off some vibe - or that their story had a hole in it somewhere. Hopefully not Anita. David already had so many things he had to work on with Max. And speaking of Max, he’d talk to Carol about what had happened with him when Dr. Stone wasn’t on duty. That rock trick could be lethal.

He gave the doctor a wave and a smile pasted over his uneasiness as he left, “Then I’ll see you Friday, Anaji.”

.

“Oh, my god, Harrison, you fucking didn’t,” Max hissed into David’s cell phone. He’d been furiously texting back and forth with the boy until he’d actually called because apparently Max was difficult to reason with over text.

“I didn’t know back then that you left your parents on purpose!” Harrison protested, voice low as if to keep from waking someone. Max knew the tone; he was doing the same with Gwen now that David had left. It was odd in Harrison’s voice, but he understood the necessity.

He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the strands almost painfully as he quietly reamed Harrison out, “You saw people you knew were my fucking parents because you’re a magic shithead and didn’t see me with them and thought it’d be a good idea to _introduce yourself_? Why would you only tell me this now? I thought you just saw them from a fucking distance or some shit!”

Goddammit, Max’s heart was going a mile a minute. Was that how his father had recognized him over the phone? Was this Harrison’s fault? Even as his blood slammed painfully through his veins, he felt the nausea rise in his throat at the idea that his parents knew anything about Standing.

“Listen, Max; I only said I went to camp with you and asked where you were when I met them the first time. They didn’t ask about you then. But they came to me today and asked if I’d heard about where you might be,” Harrison explained with a forced calm that did not in any way translate into bringing Max back down from the heights of ire. As if sensing that over the phone - and Max’s sharp exhale might have clued him in - he added hastily, “I didn’t tell them anything! I swear! I- I’ve forgotten the name of the town you’re in, anyway!”

“Good,” Max shot back, “Now forget my damn number!”

“Wait, Max, please, that’s- I- I called because your parents didn’t just ask me.” His voice dipped low, almost trembling as he spoke. “They’re… they’re saying they’ll get me kicked out of the farmers and I… don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t know of any settlements except the one you’re in and I- Max, I didn’t tell them anything. Can’t you please help me out?”

Hell no was his first instinct. His parents knew about Harrison. There was very little Max could do that he could trust wouldn’t make it back to his parents. Especially since those fuckers lived in the same town as Harrison.

Hand tightening in his hair and around the phone, Max squeezed his eyes shut and took a few shuddering, deep breaths. It wasn’t Harrison’s fault. He knew that. He _knew_ that. He could almost hear David telling him that he couldn’t blame someone for something they hadn’t even done. Max bit his lip, hard, and reminded himself of that one more time.

“Okay, yeah,” he breathed out. Hand loosening and falling away from his hair, he sat up straighter. “What do you need?”

“I need to get out of here,” Harrison said immediately in a small voice.

“And to us,” Max concluded aloud, mind spinning into ways a magical twelve year old could cross the damn country without getting killed. He couldn’t help but point out bitterly, “Which isn’t going to be fucking easy, Harrison.”

“Yeah, especially if I can’t remember the name of the town,” Harrison prodded, somehow balancing artfully between insistent and miserable.

“Honestly, the name is less of a problem than how fucking far-” Max cut himself off. Why did he want the name so badly? Standing wasn’t a very difficult name to remember, either. Harrison didn’t quite sound like himself; the words he used felt wrong. It was as if he were reading from a script rather than speaking naturally. Hadn’t Max thought his voice sounded a little off as well, earlier on? If _Max_ were able to mimic voices... 

“Who are you?” he asked warily, almost hoping Harrison would prove himself and embarrass Max for reaching for something he wasn’t sure about. A laugh echoed tinnily down the line, putting that thinking to rest. 

“You know, I didn’t even expect to get this far,” Harrison replied, sounding stronger. Strangely so. As if the timbre were off, but that was… “You’re not usually very good at caring about others.”

Max froze for a moment, fingers of his free hand curling instinctively into the bedspread as the voice melted into something more familiar than Harrison’s nasal twang by far. Jasleen Thakur. Max’s...

“Mom,” he choked out through the tight shock in his throat. No matter how long it felt, it must have only been a matter of seconds before Max caught his breath. After all, his mom hadn’t continued yet. Before he could stop himself, his next breath exited in a desperate query, “Why can’t you just leave me alone? You could just say I died in the whole apocalypse thing.”

“Max,” Jasleen tutted disapprovingly, a smile in her voice. “You can’t give up on family. We need you, baby boy. And we’re not leaving you with some unqualified, minimum wage disaster waiting to implode on itself. This is for your own good.”

“Fuck you,” Max said, instinctively, all the emotion stripped from the words. His voice inched up an octave as his words came back to life, “Fuck you; you never wanted me. Why are you doing this?”

Her smile was still audible. “Find you soon. Bye, baby.”

With a click, the line went dead. Max stared at the phone and tried not to think about what that could mean. Instead, his mind tripped over what his mother had said about Harrison and forcing him out of the farmers. She’d even called from his phone. Didn’t that mean they’d done _something_ to him? ...No, not necessarily. Harrison could have easily fucked Max over. Right? Why wouldn’t he?

Then again, Max’s mother still had to figure out where Max was. Unless she was trying to confirm what she’d already heard from Harrison, of course. Substituting out Harrison’s contact, he put in _Thakur 2_ instead. Staring at the number a moment longer, he hovered his thumb over the block button and ultimately pressed it down.

Man, Max was really starting to hate this phone.

There was another possibility.

Anita might have snitched.

In fact, it was _likely_ that Anita snitched. It had been barely a day and a half in town and she already thought she was safe. And… had gotten her hands on a cellphone. Not everyone had kept them, considering they didn’t typically work.

But that just meant if anyone _had_ kept theirs, they might give the seeming junk up for a low price.

At the door, Max realized he’d already gotten up and stalked across the room. His hand lingered on the knob, but… He had told David he’d stay here. Not that he was going to just listen. It was another salvaged door knob that was a little rusted and a little beaten up sitting in his door. Cold under his fingers. Easy to turn. No lock keeping him in.

Except, he didn’t exactly know where Anita was. Yes, this was completely true. And bringing David along would probably work in his favor, too. Yeah, Max could afford to wait.

He tapped the knob and pulled his hand away. Turned and tossed himself backwards onto his bed. He was still in his pajamas, anyway. He’d been going between two sets of clothes and occasionally washing his hoodie when they’d been on the road, so it was kind of weird to be in clothes that weren’t immediately ready for travel.

Hell, it had been weird to see David out of his usual jacket today. Not to mention Gwen. The former counselors had both worn thick, pocket-laden khaki jackets practically daily before they’d gotten to Standing. Now, Gwen had switched to some fluffy red winter coat that had compressed surprisingly well in her pack and had a distinct lack of wear and tear while David was back in long-sleeved flannel and jeans like some kind of temperature-immune lumberjack.

It was getting colder and he was losing layers. 

A clatter in the street made Max sit upright from the bed, head instantly pounding with the beating of his heart, but he realized soon enough that his parents couldn’t have made the trip across the country in a day. Harshly, Max laughed aloud as he realized he’d resorted to dissecting Gwen and David’s fashion choices to avoid thinking about them and all it took was a single unexpected sound to bring him spiraling right back.

Yet, for all he knew, it hadn’t even been his mother. Max could mimic voices and whoever had called him could do the same. Or almost the same. Hadn’t he thought it sounded strange? Granted, he’d thought it’d been because Harrison- well, Jasleen or whoever had been trying to keep from waking someone. Maybe that hadn’t been it. Maybe there had been a flaw there.

He hadn’t heard anything like it in his mother’s voice.

If that was truly because she’d stopped mimicking, then maybe he could believe it was really her. Even if he wished it hadn’t been.

Right?

There was something tight and vindictive in his chest; something that kneaded the inside of his ribs with triumph that hurt. They did want him. Why else would they be fighting so hard to get him back? Now that he was gone, they’d realized it. It was… exactly what he’d always predicted would happen- well, hoped would happen if he finally left.

He just… he wasn’t sure why. At least with David, he knew why he wanted him.

Max drifted off with uncertainty bubbling acidic in his gut and a strangeness battling the pain in his chest.

XXX

“Max.”

Anita pushed his hair aside; some of it stuck to his sweaty skin but she didn’t keep trying, putting a hot, wet cloth over his forehead instead. The room was blurry and colorful. His family’s sitting room - he could just make out a tulip sculpture his mother had always loved. Max must be lying on the couch. Anita unfolded the cloth once to cover his eyes, lips not moving as she spoke.

“Max, you know you’re not really safe.”

Her voice was strange and flat, stripped of the resonance that would normally fill out each word with life. She sounded dead as she unfolded the cloth a second time, allowing it to extend over his nose. Ice cracked somewhere, but it was far away. A humid heat dominated the room, instead.

“We need you to come home, Max.”

The last fold covered his mouth and it was damp and clinging. It filled his mouth when he tried to breathe in. He couldn’t get any air through the cloth. Wetness clung to his lips and nose, lungs burning as he choked. Dizziness overcame him with darkness on its heels. He hacked and struggled, but there was nothing that could dislodge the cloth or Anita’s firm, calloused hands on his shoulders.

“You need us.”

Smooth cold slid across his skin as Anita released him. The cloth was ripped away from his face with the movement of a cluster of massive icicles. They had grown past him with the explosive force of a rocket and shoved Anita from him. A different voice spoke as Anita’s blood dripped down the ice toward him.

“ _You will never be theirs, again._ ”

XXX

Max woke with a start, throat tight and mouth open and gasping as he sucked in air by the lungful. Fury burned hot through his system at the fact that he’d let himself fall asleep and fall victim to such a useless dream. Max didn’t _get_ nightmares. Not usually, anyway. He knew this was just because his mother had called, but it still felt wrong. In the dream, his aunt had suffocated him with some kind of cloth, telling him how much the family needed him and then it had all ended abruptly when she’d been torn from him by a spray of ice. That last line, the same from his weird dream of David, had repeated again. This time it had been David’s voice in full, not the strange half-measure his last dream had given him. It must have been because he didn’t know why his parents wanted him all of a sudden, Max thought angrily, scrubbing at his eyes and blinking away the sleep to really look around.

The darkened room was not as he’d left it when he fell asleep. The lights were out, for one, and the phone he’d left by his pillow had been plugged into a vine on the nightstand. Most notably, David was kneeling on the floor, head pillowed on his arms towards the foot of the bed and dead asleep. If Max’s blood pressure hadn’t already been through the roof, seeing some random figure leaning against his bed in the dark might have pushed it there. Sure, he didn’t scare easily, but that would startle anyone. He wanted to reach out and grab David’s hair and demand to know why he’d fallen asleep here. Adrenaline jangled through his veins, making every line in the room stand out in sharp detail. Including the new bandages wrapped neatly around David’s hand. Weird.

“David,” Max whispered sharply, not planning to do anything but talk before David was awake.

Snorting a little, David didn’t open his eyes but he did turn his head so his forehead was pressed more firmly against his arms, mumbling, “Hm, Max, what?”

Well, that was fucking promising. Flicking David in the temple now that he knew who he was talking, Max started off with the obvious question, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“What? Oh,” David sat up, pulling back a little from the bed. He wiped a hand roughly over his face, an imprint of the bed covering standing out on his skin in pink, “Yeah, I meant to wake you. Right. You just sounded tired. And you were kind of… humming? In your sleep? I thought I’d wait a bit and I…” He shook his head, red hair at an odd angle before he ran his fingers through it and smoothed it back into place, forehead notching with confusion. “I guess I fell asleep.”

Checking his watch blearily, David frowned and looked at it again.

“Sounded tired?” Max echoed incredulously, but David had other things on his mind. Still, Max had a theory. David wasn’t usually the type to fall asleep easily, and he had said he’d been humming in his sleep so even as David moved on, he started to hum quietly, a campfire song he didn’t remember the words for.

“What does the phone say?” David grabbed the phone drowsily from Max’s lopsided side table and frowned at it harder when it lit up with the time, pulling it closer to his face. “I got back five minutes ago. How in the heck did I…” His jaw popped as a bone-cracking yawn rolled out of him, frown fading as he finished woozily, “fall asleep?”

He dropped back to the bed and Max stopped humming, staring at the sleeping counselor incredulously but with a rising glee. “David.” Nothing. He tried again, just a little louder, “David!”

David’s eyes blinked open slowly and he seemed to connect some dots, asking a tad warily as he awoke, “Max… Did you…”

Fighting a grin, Max began to hum again, but though David drooped, this time he didn’t go down. Maybe this particular kind of weird shit was a little bit fun, even if it was fucked up. David raised a finger at Max accusingly. 

“Stop,” he said, the word lined more with disbelief and exasperation than any sort of demand. Max tried not to laugh and break the hum. David’s head nodded for a moment before he shook it, slapping his cheeks and narrowing his eyes, voice dipping low in warning, “Max. I get it. Stop.”

A little wide-eyed at the sudden edge of danger to David’s tone, Max stopped. “...Sorry?” he offered before backtracking wildly. “I mean, sorry you’re a wimp. I can’t believe I can fucking hum you to sleep.”

“I don’t think it’s because of _me_ ,” David said carefully, his words having lifted back into his normal range and the warning evaporating from his weary posture with the end of Max’s humming. “Max, I found something out - not about Carol, unfortunately - but it seems like there are people out here who were hit by seal creatures before they took on any form. They’ve gotten powers, it looks like, and one of them is working at the hospital. They think I’m like them, which- I guess might be sort of true for both of us. We didn’t get fused with a seal creature or something that I know of, but we were both at ground zero when the seal broke.”

“Okay, other than the fucking freaky people, that doesn’t sound like a lot of new information,” Max drew his knees up to his chest warily, pulling the thick reddish brown blanket up with them as if to ward off this conversation. However, he'd just learned his mother could mimic people, too, and it seemed unfortunately relevant. Or was that something different? Maybe a bunch of people had gotten the same powers. At least… it sounded like they were still human.

“Well, it can change people... physically, too. Remember how you thought I wasn’t eating enough?” David gestured at his face, the evidence Gwen and Max kept using to argue that David needed to eat more. “Turns out I’m probably eating a little too much, now.”

Max could draw that line of thinking to its logical conclusion. David’s diet had apparently been fucked up by whatever had happened to them, and that meant Max, too, could… Unthinkingly, Max put a hand to his throat, stating dully, “You wanna find out what’s wrong with me, too.”

“No- _Max_.” The disapproving tone took Max a little by surprise, jolting him from the sinking dread as David leaned in, gripping his arms firmly and stubbornly catching his gaze, “I want to make sure you’re healthy. I want to see if there’s anything we should be doing to keep you healthy and safe that we don’t know about yet. There’s nothing wrong with you, Max. Everybody has different needs, with or without magic sound powers. If the world had stayed how it was and the adoption had gone through, you would have already had a check up by now. That’s all this is, in the end. It just took an honestly kind of scary doctor to remind me of that, considering how much we’ve all been through to get here.” He paused, then added a little teasingly, “I might need to see if I can pick up some tips from other people with powers so you can’t just drop me unconscious when you don’t want to do something.”

“I think you did kind of resist it that last time,” Max muttered into his knees, trying and failing to keep from meeting David’s eyes.

“And that’s a good thing,” David reminded him cheerfully, though an edge of steel had slipped in beneath the upbeat words. “We don’t want me knocked out if anything goes horribly wrong, do we?”

With a roll of his eyes, Max settled a little harder back against the headboard to get David to release his shoulders and admitted grudgingly, “I guess not.”

“Of course not,” David agreed, answering his own question in the process and brushing some of Max’s hair idly out of his face. The motion nearly snapped Max back into his dream, but David’s fingers were cool, unlike the heat of that room and there was nothing over his mouth and nose this time. Before he could stop himself, he pushed his head a little into the touch - for the temperature and the reminder that he was here - but that- no. Flushing brilliantly, Max jerked away before he could lean too much into it. He wasn’t a little kid and he didn’t get nightmares. No, he had important information of his own to relate.

Grabbing David’s hovering hand before he could reach out again ( _he seemed like he was about to pull it back,_ some part of Max sneered internally, but he ignored it), Max restrained the hand against his raised knees and blurted, “My mom called me.”

Every line of David’s body pulled taut. His fingers gripped Max’s knee before he flexed them and let his hand lie limply beneath both of Max’s own. Neutrality dripped from his tone like David had painted the words in buckets of it. 

“What did she have to say?”

Okay, not the best opening, but there was no sense easing into it when Max was sure the reaction would be the same either way. He might as well continue blundering down the same track, graceless and straight forward.

“She said some creepy shit about finding me soon but… she called from Harrison’s phone with, um… Harrison’s voice.” He filled David in on the call, fielding questions carefully so he didn’t reveal his previous conversation with his dad. It wasn’t that it was so much a secret that his dad could recognize him when he was mimicking someone else - or maybe he had guessed, with Jasleen’s talent being known to him - but… He didn’t want David to know he’d called them, even just to check on what they were doing.

David seemed a little troubled by the news, but Max wasn’t sure what to do about that. He was kind of freaking out a smidgen himself. Not a lot. He just didn’t like how sure Jasleen had sounded about finding him soon. He wasn't sure what they could do about it, but David seemed deep in thought.

“Screw it, you’re always talking to someone; I never find you alone. Hi Max!”

David and Max turned as one to see the small, hand crank radio they’d been carrying around light up as Azira Fail’s peppy voice emitted from the small speakers.

“And David, I guess. Wow, what a show! Audience of four, of course, but size doesn’t matter! Quality is what counts - especially when it comes to family!” she continued on blithely, static scratching across the connection in the background. “Look, I’ll just come out and say it; I like you kids. I was really rooting for you. The thing is that’s old news now and I’ve never been one to cling to the past!” She laughed, the sound jingling out of the speakers as if she were actually in the room. “I’m not sure where you both are now, but you’re near a radio and that’s enough to talk! I’ve fixed some things. You should really come meet the Thakurs so I can-”

A crash cut off the transmission as the radio struck the wall and shattered, pieces flying gleefully free of their chassis and clattering to the floor. David lowered his hand, looking distinctly unimpressed and unashamed at having utterly destroyed a whole ass radio for innocently receiving a transmission as it was built to do.

“What the fuck, David?” Max leaned over the edge of the bed to see the extent of the damage. Yeah, all the king’s men couldn’t put that back fucking together again. He sat upright again and waved sharply down at the destruction.

“No radios for now,” David said instead of explaining. It wasn’t even like he really needed to explain why he’d reacted, just why he’d had to _destroy it_ instead of turn it off like a normal person. Abruptly he winced, the steel melting from him as he turned to Max with apologetic eyes, “Unless you… _want_ to talk-”

“No,” Max interjected with more confidence than he’d thought he had. The quickness of the answer made them both pause and Max repeated more quietly, “No, not really.”

“Okay, um…” David looked down at his watch again. “You’ve got another few hours to sleep before we’re all heading out to the training grounds. Let’s deal with the rest of this later. For now, we'll stick with Standing and I'll...” He put a hand sheepishly up to the back of his neck as he took in the mess he’d made, “I’ll clean that up. Good night, Max.” He drew Max’s mussed bedding back up and patted it smooth, Max going along with the motions quietly as David tucked him in. David was in and out of the room for the next minute or so as he efficiently swept up the pieces and transported them out of the room. On his last pass, he turned out the light at the door, “Love you.”

He never lingered, when he said that at night, and now was not an exception. The words hit the air and David was gone, not waiting for a reply.

As Max turned over, visions of his parents, Anita, and strange powers haunting him, he wondered if that was thoughtful, or if David was protecting himself from the silence that followed. Though it made his chest feel odd and tight, it wasn’t all that important in the face of what that little radio incident meant. He tried to keep his mind off it, wanting to deny what Azira’s message implied. At heart though, Max was a pessimist. There was no escaping the truth.

His parents were making powerful friends.

And they might be closing in.

.

On the other side of the wall, David sat pensively in the main room on the floor, hand lingering over his mouth as he came to similar conclusions.

They could run, again, but their reasons for stopping hadn’t become any less pressing with these revelations. Winter was still bearing down on them and there remained few options when it came to human-friendly settlements David knew how to find. No, they would need to entrench themselves here. That meant talking with Carol, digging roots deep into the guard and the potential allies they had in town, and dealing with Killer’s suspicions. If they could show that this was best for Max, regardless of the legality, it was possible - not likely, but possible - that they might get Killer on their side. He’d reacted fairly well to Nikki’s new situation, after all.

Which David… had forgotten to tell Max in all the confusion of the last few hours.

Oh boy.


End file.
